Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 4, 1990 TAG: 9004040231
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Forget the pictures. The recipe titles alone are enough to make the salivary glands break into a heavy sweat.
There's Carrot Raisin Cake with IrishCream Frosting on the cover of Gourmet magazine. And peering out from the March issue of Food & Wine, sample this: Chocolate Souffle Crepes with Chocolate Sorbet and Chocolate Wafers - you should see this picture.
And who knows exactly what Buccellato is? But this Italian sweet bread recipe on Page 78 of Bon Appetit sure has a pretty ring to it.
Yes, it was another of those hellish food-story assignments, to examine the current crop of food magazines and to interview their respective editors about their journal's coverage of the food industry.
Five magazines turned up. Each had a distinct style and yet all covered many of the same topics: eating faster, eating healthier and eating easier - but always eating well.
Why so many magazines covering the same subject?
Put simply, food is in. And so is reading and talking about it - and, of course, writing about it.
"Just as 10 and 20 years ago, people felt like they had to talk about the latest books - whether they had read them or not - today there is a greater awareness of food and a tendency to buy, to read, and to use food magazines," Warren Picower, managing editor of Food & Wine, said.
Food & Wine, Gourmet and Bon Appetit seem the most similar of the five food magazines available at Roanoke newsstands. Each targets a more worldly, upscale audience, devoting a lot of space to traveling and entertaining, in addition to cooking techniques.
Gourmet, which has been around the longest, since 1941, showcased "gourmet holiday" stories on Bermuda and Louisiana's crawfish country in its March issue, for example. And Bon Appetit devoted its entire March magazine to Italy, both traveling in Italy and cooking from some recipes of Italy.
"Our magazine is for people who are interested in food, whether it's served in a restaurant or they're cooking it themselves," said Zanne Zakroff, director of Gourmet's food department. "Our readers like to know about things and read recipes - even if they're not necessarily interested in preparing them."
Of those three magazines, Food & Wineseemed the most user-friendly and the least pretentious. But maybe my bias is showing through 6 1 FOOD Food here - its March cover story is, after all, on chocolate.
As editor Carole Lalli wrote in her column, "We have resolved that there can't be too much of a good thing, if the good thing is chocolate."
Perhaps another thing that endeared me to Food & Wine, content notwithstanding, was managing editor Picower's willingness to talk - on and on - about the magazine. (Also, he was the only editor interviewed who didn't say: "Roanoke where? What the heck is Roanoke, Virginia?")
Overall, my favorite of the five is Cook's, a relative newcomer to the cooking-magazine scene. Begun in 1980, in a garage in suburban Connecticut, the magazine now has 200,000 subscribers. Of the five, though, Cook's still has by far the fewest readers.
What separates Cook's from those aforementioned is that it concentrates on food and the people who cook it - to the exclusion of travel and leisure.
It was also the only one that had a photograph of an actual cook on its cover, rather than a sexy picture of an exotic food dish. "The rationale for that is that we go to the experts for information, not to another cookbook or the library," said Deborah Hartz, editor-in-chief.
"We report firsthand. Rather than just calling a veal farm, we'll go to a veal farm and write about what is really happening."
Cook's March issue featured a cooking lesson on Vietnamese cooking and how to use rice paper; a profile of a Maine restaurant, where the chef uses locally grown organic produce; dessert-making without using egg yolks; and several monthly columns, including a news section reporting trends and studies, and a profile on home entertaining.
"Although we're not a health magazine, and we won't give up a tablespoon of butter to save 9 calories, we do try to use olive oil where we can and to cut down on salt, butter and cream as much as possible," Hartz said.
Cooking Light, as the title suggests, does cut down on the rich stuff - all the way down, for the most part. It takes a fitness-first approach, detailing recipe contents for calories, protein, fat, cholesterol and the like for every dish.
The newest magazine on the market, Cooking Light is published seven times a year under the umbrella of Southern Living. It began in 1987, when Southern Living's "Cooking Light" column was such a hit that it branched off into a magazine of its own.
Equally divided between food and fitness, the March issue featured cooking with spring vegetables; three single parents' stories of raising kids in a healthy environment; and a new look at meat and potatoes - the lightened version, of course; and regular columns, including kids' fitness, exercise, and how to make traditionally rich dishes the light way.
In two years, the magazine's circulation has grown to 800,000. In terms of newsstand sales, it is the second-highest selling food magazine in the Roanoke area, behind Gourmet, according to Anderson News, which supplies magazines to area stores. (Bon Appetit is third, followed by Cook's and Food & Wine.)
"We're not a diet magazine," said Jodi Jackson, assistant editor at Cooking Light. "We don't promote recipes for you to lose weight, even though that may happen if you were to use our recipes."
All that, and there's still something in there for everybody. After all, who could turn down Almond Cake with Strawberries at only 169 calories per serving?
by CNB