Wait, When Did Food Get So Cool?
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Five years ago, when we relaunched Bon Appétit, we wanted to put together a food magazine that was about more than just what’s for dinner.
Why? Because something was starting to happen. Food was becoming a thing. It wasn’t just for certified foodies anymore—everybody was getting into it.
So we built a staff of editors with a range of backgrounds. Executive editor Christine Muhlke, who’s absurdly knowledgeable about both food and fashion, came from T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Our visually gifted creative director, Alex Grossman, arrived from a high-gloss branding agency. And while Andrew Knowlton remains our longest-tenured staffer, he is someone who’s just as likely to go on about his annual list of our best new restaurants as he is his latest Grateful Dead download (current favorite: Live at Fillmore East—2/13/70).
The reality is, we as a nation of eaters have evolved. We’ve transitioned away from a world of food TV and celebrity chefs—where you had to be a card-carrying foodie to talk about food with any authority—to one where everyone has a stake in the game. Food has gone wide—it has become, of all things, cool.
Which is how we have arrived here, at our first-ever Culture Issue. On the following pages, we tap into the intersection of food and music and entertainment and politics and more. We poke just a bit of fun at how obsessed millennials are with eating (can you imagine saving up your hard-earned drinking money when you were 23 to go to a Scandinavian pop-up dinner?). And we break down the finer points of Instagramming (natural light only! directly overhead preferred!). Because if you don’t snap and share a photo of your meal, it never happened, right?
And while this new generation still loves Martha and Ina, we now have a roster of food fans out there to call our own—musicians like Beyoncé (with her Yale-lettered kale sweatshirt) and Questlove, whose book Something to Food About: Exploring Creativity with Innovative Chefs hits stores next month. Even our president has gotten in on the fervor, joining the throngs lined up outside Rose’s Luxury for D.C.’s finest meal (okay, maybe he’s the one person who was allowed to cut the legendary line).
The fact is, food culture isn’t niche anymore. And as it has changed, Bon Appétit has changed with it. Nowadays, everyone is invited to the table, and we love that. It makes for a far more interesting dinner table conversation and, I like to think, a far more dynamic magazine.