Why? Why why why…? It was October 5th, about two weeks ago, I was at the gym, on the treadmill. Loud music blasting in my iPod earphones, CNN on the screen in front of me, both meant to distract me from dwelling on the fact that I’m running on a conveyor belt alongside other people running on conveyor belts. Then I saw it. An image on the TV screen of the cover of the latest issue of Gourmet magazine, and the printed headline, “Gourmet magazine closes after 70 years.” WHAT!? No Way! How is that possible? I’m frantically looking around, for… what… ? I think I was expecting others must have seen this headline and also stopped running out of shock and disbelief, like me. I was thinking I’d see people hugging, comforting one another over the news, shaking their heads. But no, I only saw people still running, pedaling, and the usual sea of heads bobbing up and down in the elliptical section.
I couldn’t keep going. I had to know what happened, so I ran home and checked online and yes, indeed, Conde Nast was shutting down Gourmet. Along with 3 other titles: a cookie magazine and two bridal magazines. I don’t get it. Isn’t there another silly magazine they could shut down? How about Golf World or Golf Digest? Does the world really need both? (or either?) Immediately I emailed my Mom, my Stepmom, and chef Neal, among others, like “OMG, did you hear???” They too were saddened. I wanted to call people and talk about it. I wanted to pull out a bottle of good wine and sit on the floor with all my old issues spread out around me, flipping through them and getting drunk and nostalgic.
I wanted to grieve. I wanted to be around people who understood and were similarly bummed out. I felt like there should be a huge and grand memorial service. Ruth Reichl (the editor) would get up and speak, past editors would get up and speak. All the food world would be there, dressed in dark clothes, and easels everywhere with giant cover images. Then everyone would drink really really good wine, and eat lots of beautiful food, and feel the comfort of communal mourning. Maybe there was such a service and I just wasn’t invited.
Anyway. I was reminded of all of this earlier today as I flipped through my copy of Bon Appetit, Conde Nast’s other food publication that was chosen over Gourmet to live on. The close up photos inside looked gory, the bulky font headlines over them cartoonish, and the dishes simple and uninspiring. Even the lighting on the styled photos looked weird and shadowy. The headlines were: “Entertaining Do’s and Don’ts”, “Party Desserts”, “Healthy Holiday Foods”, “68 Recipes to Mix & Match” and “Leftovers Done Right!” with the boring November issue glossy turkey cover, and “Thanksgiving Made Easy!” across the top. Thanksgiving isn’t supposed to be easy! You’re supposed to labor, with love.
Gourmet was beautiful and classy. It was only a few days before the fateful announcement that I read what I would never have suspected was my last issue. I even thought to myself I was going to call and double back up on my subscription like I did years ago. This way, I can tear out pages in one copy, and keep the other untouched, for my collection. Did I mention I have every single issue filed away going back through 1997? That’s 12 years. I used to have a few more years before that but I recall a very painful and reluctant purging of a couple piles a long time ago. One day I’m going to get the covers scanned and copied and will wallpaper a kitchen hallway with them. Or something like that. Every cover was a work of art, with more pages of art inside. Vegan or not, I was particularly struck by the photos on p. 102/103 of pork chops. “Pork chop” just sounds vulgar. But the photo on page 103 is a work of art. If you get obsessed about color like I do, you’d understand. The pink of the inside of the meat, the mossy dark green backdrop, the burgundy wine… I want to go back to all these pages when I’m picking colors for packaging labels, for furniture fabrics, for clothing I want to design, for whatever I’m putting together, in my Martha Stewart-esque creative fantasy land.
Going almost all raw vegan six years ago did nothing to lessen my appreciation for the pages of this magazine. It’s very much a celebration of the art and elegance of food, restaurants, and cooking. But it’s also been more thoughtful than that. In the August 2004 summer issue (with the sexy cover photo of blackberry jam in a glass jar with a wooden spoon) the editor bravely published an article which infuriated many of the magazine’s readers. It was called “Consider the Lobster” written by the famous writer David Foster Wallace (known for novels, short stories, and essays, not food writing, who also, btw, killed himself about a year ago…L). They sent him to report on the 56th annual Maine Lobster Festival (where “something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed’). She published his entire essay without editing a word. It’s really long and full of digressions and lengthy footnotes. But as Ruth Reichl points out in her Editor’s Letter, “it is hilarious, thought-provoking, very uncomfortable—and something you’re not likely to forget anytime soon.”
With all of its funny details, Wallace makes you feel like you’re there with him. His comments on his discomfort with mass tourism (specifically in footnote 6) are particularly sobering given that he took his own life a few years later. Why is introspection such torture? In the spirit of Wallace’s many digressions, I’m totally digressing here to include a link to a thoroughly beautiful speech given on an overlapping and entirely relevant issue by the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. You can see it here. It’s 20 minutes. Well worth it. Believe me, I have no patience for youtube crap, but this is the opposite. From the TED series, I was referred to this talk by my friend, champion, and hero, Seth Godin. Watch it. Especially if you’ve ever felt tormented by the creative process, whether writing, creating art or music, science, or building a business.
Back to lobsters. Where was I. OK, so part way through this incredibly engaging article, Wallace puts forth what seemed to him in this context an unavoidable question:
“Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does ‘all right’ even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?”
Gourmet magazine has been around for almost twice as long as I have, so I haven’t read all the issues, but I’m guessing this is the first time this sort of question was raised in its pages. In a corresponding footnote he points out:
“Similar reasoning underlies the practice of what’s termed ‘debeaking’ broiler chickens and brood hens in modern factory farms. Maximum commercial efficiency requires that enormous poultry populations be confined in unnaturally close quarters, under which conditions many birds go crazy and peck one another to death. As a purely observational side-note, be apprised that debeaking is usually an automated process and that the chickens receive no anesthetic. It’s not clear to me whether most Gourmet readers know about debeaking, or about related practices like dehorning cattle in commercial feedlots, cropping swine’s tails in factory hog farms to keep psychotically bored neighbors from chewing them off, and so forth. It so happens that your assigned correspondent knew almost nothing about standard meat-industry operations before starting work on this article.”
The article is so good that it’s really hard not to quote the entire thing. He’s taking you along with him as he learns a bunch of new stuff himself. In another paragraph he points out:
“The more important point here, though, is that the whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of Gourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.”
He goes on investigating these questions incredibly thoroughly and thoughtfully, without judgment. I love that the whole thing is without judgment and very personal. You rarely learn so much about the author in a food magazine article. Anyway. He says,
“I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and salutation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.”
And finally, his conclusion isn’t conclusive, just more thoughtful questions:
“Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. … Is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?”
I love love love this essay. And I love Ruth Reichl even more than I did before for printing it. Many readers were furious and cancelled their subscriptions after this article appeared. Which I think is ridiculous. He put forth incredibly relevant (an understatement) questions for people to think about. After all, didn’t I just wax on in the above paragraphs about the beautiful photo of pork chops? Admiring the aesthetics of the photo vs. the content—the artfulness of it rather than the reality that it’s a photograph of a slice of a cooked slab of dead pig?
Watching those nature shows on TV where the lioness attacks and kills the gazelle—I can’t help feeling sad for the poor gazelle, the one of the herd that gets caught and taken down. But the gazelle wasn’t trapped, restrained, de-beaked (if it had a beak—you know what I’m getting at), demeaned, injected with hormones and antibiotics, fed a bunch of crap, or forced to walk a plank and watch a bunch of gazelles before it get unceremoniously and thoughtlessly slain before its turn to die. Was the pig in the photo? I don’t know. I could go on and on thinking these things through.
I loved this article when I first read it in 2004 and I love it now. It’s much easier to read, by the way, if you click on the “print” icon and print the whole thing, 11 pages of paper consumed and all. Easier to read the footnotes that way, and then you can pass it along to someone who might not read it online. Like your grandma. While you’re at it, click on the link to the related articles and you’ll find quite a bit on Food Politics, such as “A View to a Kill” which investigates America’s chicken industry and more humane ways to raise and kill chickens. This one doesn’t even compare to the amazingness that is the lobster article, but again I was cheering Gourmet for printing it and others like it—for raising these questions to its readers.
Despite all the questions in my own mind, I still love the photography and overall beauty and spirit of this now defunct food magazine. I just realized if you flip back a few pages from the pork picture I was admiring so much, there’s a beautiful full page photo of the featured chef holding a lamb, but he’s not in a chef coat and he’s not proudly posing with his prey. He’s holding the lamb like you’d hold a kitten and kissing its forehead. And opposite the pork beauty shot is a quarter page black and white of a pig. These are stunning shots, and their inclusion in the magazine acknowledges that the food in the photos come from these beautiful creatures. Which reminds me… if you’ve been to my restaurant Pure Food and Wine, then you’ve probably noticed the three different photographs on one wall of a very spirited looking duck. I found this photo before the restaurant opened in another 2004 issue of Gourmet. What struck me about it was how the duck was looking right into the camera with an almost feisty sort of look in his eye. I was in love with that photograph (and tracked down the photographer to get it). Little did I know that photo would inspire the name of my company a year later. 
I will miss this magazine. The pages of Gourmet will always be inspiring to me.
I concur with ALL of your sentiments.
For me this added insult to injury because I have been dismayed since Conde cancelled Domino magazine. Not sure if you were familiar with Domino, but it was a home decor mag that focused on lower-budget home stylings with an emphasis on sustainability. They always had one food article each month and one of their food features was a RAW food article suggesting that people try to eat just 2 raw meals per day. It was after reading this article that I committed to having a raw lunch after my morning smoothie. It wasn’t long after that, because I didn’t want to kill my many hours of feeling sublime all day, that I went almost completely raw. So, Domino essentially turned my life around and I was sad to see it go.
You’ll never believe what Conde Nasty started sending me in place of Domino…..Architectural Digest. HA! AS if!
I posted about the end of Gourmet as well:
http://veggiegirlvegan.blogspot.com/2009/10/gratitude-for-gourmet.html
Liz
So much has been written about Gourmet’s closure since it was announced. So much of it has been just… mediocre. It’s as if a whole legion of closet Gourmet fans poured out of the woodwork. Where were they before, I wonder?
I really enjoyed your essay. Particularly because I was also blindsided, struck, reverent when I first read Consider the Lobster back in ‘04. I remember re-reading it following his suicide and thinking about his musings on aesthetics and morality … it was oddly prophetic, especially the last bit of footnote six.
I’m only 23, so I just first read Gourmet when Reichl took over back in ‘99. When I was younger, I remember finding so much of the photography almost garish: so saturated, shiny, unforgiving – almost glistening. Over time, I’ve grown to love these images, jewel-like and opulently styled and such a stark contrast to Bon Appetit’s cold choppiness. As a mostly-vegan, Gourmet’s display of animal protein has been almost morbidly fascinating to me. It’s flesh, but treated with a certain reverence.
Yes, there are a huddle of us Gourmet readers, mourning with you on that treadmill. Thanks for this subtle remembrance.
( PSST. If you want to delete this comment and edit your blog, it’s A-OK with me: Cookie is a parenting magazine. Not a cookie magazine. )
I thought I was the only one!!!! I will be so sad to see Gourmet go – I used to read my grandmother’s back issues when I was a little girl and have had a subscription of my own for some time. Very depressing news.
(
I, too, was a bit upset. I actually just renewed my subscription the very week before the announcement and now i feel at a loss. and pissed off. i looked forward to that magazine in the mail… conde nast is a killjoy! keeping bon appetit over gourmet… seriously??
Just beginning my transformation into raw food and exploring your website I came across your blog and was immediately reminded how thoughtless I have been over the years.
As a child I can remember telling my parents “I am a vegan, and I don’t want to eat any more animals!” only to have my mother say ” Of course you are honey, now eat your chicken!” in my family, I’m not sure about yours, we always did what mom said OR ELSE!
Well, today is my 41st birthday and after being reminded that animals have always been my best and most loyal friends (even when our rooster would chase me out of the hen house while collecting eggs). I’ve chosen today, to finally decide for myself to stop eating animals!
A week ago I ordered my first Excaliber dehydrator and have read both of your books…..If I can only master this dehydrating thing……, maybe my family will join me and not think I’ve gone completely mad this year!!
My first few dehydrated “veggie chips” and “fruit” if you can call them that, did not go over so well….
I’ll keep trying, but thank you for reminding me that “I decide!”
Animals have feelings too, even the quiet ones!
I too was deeply saddened by Gourmet ending my subscription early! I loved making their holiday desserts!!
Such a lovely tribute. I love this post Sarma! Ditto on Liz Gilbert’s talk. it was amazing!
Great post, Sarma. Your passion shines through. However, the loss of a magazine is simply a reflection of the times and…is most certainly a result of excellent blog posts, such as this one. Magazines in general are no longer what people read. I for one haven’t subscribed to a magazine since the 1990s. I do all my short article reading online. Times they are a’changing. I do understand your sadness, completely. It sounds as though Gourmet was important to you. But, as my grandmother used to say, the only thing constant is change. Once again, lovely post.
I’m very sorry for your loss Sarma. I hope that in this time of loss, you feel comfort in knowing that Gourmet will always be alive in our hearts and minds. Seriously though, I understand when a periodical that you look forward to each month shuts down, it leaves a bit of emptiness, like a friend that moves far. I still have my issues of the short lived Organic Living that my husband complains about, he can’t understand why I don’t part with them even though they are a few years old now! Maybe something newer, and better will come along!
I was so sad to hear the news as well. Gourmet was a great, inspiring magazine. I think it will be missed by many. It was one of my favorite food magazines to read especially around the holidays.
It’s sad to see that even vegans, vegetarians, and even flexitarians mourn the loss of a magazine that contributed to the high incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc. in the U.S. and beyond. If one is not familiar with the magazine, please refer to their recipe section on their website where today they have a section for frozen peanut butter pie with candied bacon; ingredients include candied bacon, heavy cream, milk, and butter. Or take a look at the grilled pork cheeseburgers where the recipe explicity states, “not lean” when referring to the pork. The website is loaded with foie gras and veal recipes and throughtout the years, thousands of reciles that call for cream, butter, red meat, refined sugars, refined carbohydrates, etc.
I grew up eating meat, veal, cheese, cream, and butter voraciously and yes the consumption of these foods does indeed bring back positive memories as I vividly recall eating these foods with grandparents, parents, friends, etc. I even recall my mother reading this magazine and I would not be surprised if she utilized some reciples from this magazine.
The end of this magazine is a positive thing. It is not realistic to expect carnivourous food to go extinct or even the way of styrofoam in the immediate future. But slowly, we need to realize that meat is not only unhealthy for humans but also unhealthy for the environment. We need more publications espousing this fact and less espousing the wonders of foie gras and peanut butter pie with bacon.
Don’t worry, one day there will be a magazine for vegan gourmand snobs to replace this magazine.
Hi Michelle,
I actually totally agree that so much meat and dairy, sugar and butter etc are really unhealthy. But as someone who loves the art of cooking, I will still be sad to see Gourmet go. I would not be so sad to see Bon Appetit go, or even better… all the shows on the Food Network that have veered so far from the art of cooking towards a more vulgar, gluttonous sort of food fest. I think it really turned a corner in that direction with Emeril… and his BAM! sloppiness and cavalierness (is that a word??) with food, and making over the top portions, big piles of food, literally thrown together. One distinction between Gourmet vs so much of what’s out there is a reverence for food (as I think someone pointed out in a comment above). So many shows on TV encourage the opposite of that. I think that’s sad.
Part of my point in the post above is my own conflict between admiring a beautiful photo of pork chops as art and knowing how destructive the vast consumption of animal foods is on people and the planet.
In media, I’d like to work to change that in the future. As you said… a magazine with that care, love, and art applied to plant based cooking and eating (or not cooking, etc) will make its way out there (add that to my list of things I want to do).
Thank you SO very much for devoting some time and space to remembering such a fabulous publication! I’m now into my first full year of eating almost 100% raw and of course vegan but I never stopped buying Gourmet for all of the beautiful images and articles..such as the one you mentioned. Love your blog, your books, your restaurant, all of it! Thank you!
Thank you for this wonderful post.
Great blog.
I was a little surprised that they chose Bon Appetite over Gourmet.
I am a food photographer and don’t really like the style of Bon Appetite
The food looks unappealing. I don’t want to eat it.
I think that Bon Appetite will become more gourmet like in it’s evolution.
It’s my understanding that they were taking the two magazines and combining them.
Bill Brady Food Photographer
I too am saddened by this beautiful chronicle of food. I’ve been a fan of Gourmet since by college days, and it’s always a go to for a quick holiday gift or two. It will be missed. And yes Sarma, I agree, Golf Digest should go instead!!
By the way, does anyone know what that beautiful dessert is at the top of the blog on the cover. Looks like a yummy cheesecake, and an easy raw convert!!
sarma-
this is my favorite thing you’ve ever written, that i’ve read.
thank you.
Miss Sarma:
Sorry to hear about Gourmet. It was the Jackie Onassis of food mags, no? (BTW: I’ve been enjoying your coconut cream recipe this week… covering berries with it rather than choc. torte, though. LOVE that recipe!)
Stacy
Ugh, I KNOW! I love Gourmet! It’s so much better than that lame-o Bon Appetit. That essay was really cool.
As an aspiring food photographer I was devastated. I still love Bon Appetit, but I think it’s more appealing artistically to people outside the food industry – they’re trying to survive in a shrinking print market, you can’t blame them for making a change. Gourmet will be sadly missed.
Wow. I’m SO glad I came across your blog! I admire your insight and brilliance that you share with the ‘blog world’– such a rockstar. I look forward to reading your future posts
Sweet dreams, pretty!
Bec
Dear Sarma,
We went to Newton North together; and somehow I’ve drifted over to your blog from facebook, not sure how that happenend…. Your blog is very rich with facts and thoughtful opinions. Two questions for you: First- in theory raw food diets seem great, but what are you hearing from people that stick with them? The traditional Chinese diet, of which I am an avid follower, avoids raw foods because they can weaken the digestion. This is something I see with many of my patients, poor spleen qi… Second, I agree that conventional animal farming is obscene, but having read Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Vegetable Mineral” I am now acutely aware that any mass vegetable farming operation kills almost as much animal mass (mostly rodents that meet an early fate) as that consumed by grain eating pigs, cows and chickens. Perhaps you’ve covered this in previous blogs?
In any event, keep up the good work!
Seth Baker Bock
Now in Newport
http://www.lastdaysofgourmet.com/
[...] The End of Gourmet (And Why I’m So Bummed) by Sarma Melngailis (October) All the food world would be there, dressed in dark clothes, and easels everywhere with giant cover images. Then everyone would drink really really good wine, and eat lots of beautiful food, and feel the comfort of communal mourning. [...]
Hi Sarma.
I, too, was very bummed and shocked over the loss of Gourmet.
It may comfort you(or at least give you closure) to listen to a very candid and entertaining discussion between Ruth Reichl, Laurie Ochoa, Jonathn Gold and moderator Evan Kleiman. The lecture took place last Tuesday in Los Angeles and the entire event is on video. Here’s the link: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2010/01/a-celebration-of-gourmet-magazine/
The link to the video is at the very end of the synopsis.
PS.
LOVE LOVE your new cookbook! Getting ready to make your oatmeal cookies…yet again. Thank you!
Wow! I just discovered your blog courtesy of Heathy’s, and I love it! I used to be a huge Gourmet fan. I was surprised when I finally realized I rarely ever made any of the recipes, I just loved to read the mag! I had to stop subscribing when I moved to a studio apt and had no room to keep them any more and now I wish I had kept them all! I did not realize they were going out of print! Way to catch up. Where was I when this happened? I am not a huge Ruth fan, but I am glad she printed the lobster article and sorry if it contributed in any way to the demise of my favorite mag ever!
I cannot wait to come to the restaurant next time I am in NY! will be placing an order online soon!