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Will you miss Gourmet magazine?

I have years of old "Gourmet" magazines and especially cherish the ones with the "centerfolds" that epitomized the regal table that we all aspired to. Will you miss Gourmet magazine? Why or why not?

53 Comments:

I will miss epicurious.com if they take it away which is database of Gourmet recipes. I was letting my subscription run out, interestingly enough Nov issue is the end of mine.

I am tired of Gourmet. Every issue is the same old bunch of oooh let us eat this meal with some young underwear models in shabby chic dining room. I do not want that in a magazine. It was not Vogue ffs. They took away the old Gourmet which was the snobby, foodinista, entertaining standby and turned it into food vogue and I hated it. Ruth's handling of Gourmet did not impress me at all. We often here on SE talked about Gourmet and Ruth. I guess she does not read us. No better focus group than us. The last couple of years I used to get it for the editorial section where people ask for recipes of food they have had enjoyed at a restaurtant.
I also believe Gourmet will come back in another incarnation. After the economy does its cyclical turn and hopefully with someone who can run it without pics of Slad and Deter in DKNY sucking down risotto. Everyone knows Slad and Deter don't eat anything like that LOL.

I do get Buon Apetit but I am thinking about adding Fine Cooking.

From what I understand epicurious.com will still be running.

According to CNN.com, Gourmet will still have recipes on epicurious.com.

The mag itself? Not so much. The column by the Sterns, yes.

I was shocked to hear the news yesterday, but to be honest, I hadn't bought Gourmet for a while, as it had become too much of a lifestyle magazine to me (mimicking F&W, which to me is unbearable). I switched to Bon Appetit as my Conde Nast pick. Bon Ap has been good about teaching technique, and felt more focused on food and recipes. I guess I will miss having the possibility to buy it, to think that I am choosing Bon Ap over Gourmet because I like food and don't care to be directed to a certain way of enjoying it.

I will miss it terribly.

What Gourmet has been doing really well lately is thoughtful, interesting and literate articles about food, drink, food politics, culture, traditions, and more. As I see it, Saveur has been busy getting glossier and leaving behind the niche it had staked out as a chronicler of real food traditions. It landed in a more middle-of-the-road territory with more puff pieces, recipes, and product spotlights. In the meantime, Gourmet sort of crept in and grabbed some of the audience that Saveur left unattended, and did it well.

That said, at some level I see your point re: Slad & Deter. (But what kind of name is Slad?) But I don't, personally, read food magazines for the recipes/menu plans/photo spreads. I don't cook that way at all, and although that food porn occasionally inspires my cooking, I would prefer to see that aspect minimized.

A bunch - favorite mag i get in the mail. I live in the boonies and i felt somehow connected to the peoples in the city who eat at these restaurants i read about. I like the "snobby" recipes that require careful and long planning. Not everybody likes a freakin "30 minutes" meal, where i add a can of campbell soup to pork loin put in a casserole dish to cook while i microwave the frozen vegetable medley!
They had a good blend of new world and old world recipes, tools, interesting travel destinations....sucks the bag!

I'll definitely miss it. I love the beautiful photos, the simplicity of the quick meals (pasta carbonara with a poached egg on top? Yes please!), and the feeling that the magazine was put together with great effort and planning. I also get Cooking Light (the subscription was a gift from a family member), and I like it, but it doesn't inspire. There are tons of recipes, but there's nothing new in there.

Reading Gourmet almost always pulls me into the kitchen, even if I'm not making its recipes. I'll miss the thrill of opening my mailbox to find something so beautiful among the stacks of bills and junk mail. So sad.

I will miss Gourmet so much. I remember being seven or eight and going to interminable visits to my grandparents', where I would steal away to a corner to read their old copies of Gourmet (my grandmother had them going back to the sixties). To me, it was enough of an institution that I continued to value it as it changed over time - it was always an inspiration to get me into the kitchen.

Does this mean that Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie (TV show) is gone too?

I did love the photos and the articles, and while I'm not for putting onion soup mix on my chuck roast and throwing it in the slow cooker, I found many of the recipes a tad convoluted and time consuming. I, too, was about to let my subscription expire.

If everyone who is sad or upset about the passing of Gourmet had a subscription I doubt they would have closed the magazine down.

Well, I was subscribed until 2017, and I'd just renewed two subscriptions for family members--so I picked up quite a bit of slack for Serious Eaters! The magazine always seemed to have a million ads to me, so it's hard to believe ad revenues were down 46%. But it must be so. Perhaps they were giving ads away! Truth to tell, many of my 8 years of subscriptions were freebies from the cookbook website Jessica's Biscuit (spend $50 on cookbooks, get a free year of "Gourmet") so I guess I didn't take up that much slack, after all. I will really miss seeing those covers each month in my mailbox.

Yes, but as long as I still have my Saveur I'll be ok.

i'll miss the sterns for sure. i wonder what will happen to their enterprise now that gourmet is gone and they are no longer married?

the magazine wasn't so great in the last few years, but i loved reading the occasional article by people like nicole mones {who is a superb food writer -- check out her novel the last chinese chef} and ann patchett.

I had just fallen in love with and subscribed to Gourmet, so it kind of feels like when you have a new crush in high school and suddenly his family moves away or something. Devastating!

I didn't fall in love with Gourmet for its accessible recipes, nor for its restaurant reviews or glamour shots of dinner tables. I fell in love with it for its incredible writing, about food traditions, food politics, farmers, cooks, and eating. Gourmet felt like food for my mind, where Bon Appetit (and the interwebs) are where I find most of my recipes.

And in case anyone is wondering: Magazines don't live or die based on subscriptions. Subscriptions don't matter. Ad sales matter and only ad sales. And if you compare Gourmet side by side with some other foodie magazines, it's clear that they had fewer (it's all about the page count).

Haven't read it in about 10 years due to the emphasis on aspirational lifestyle type articles with pictures of wealthy people wearing sweaters around their necks who would never stoop to Gourmet-level food preparation. FWIW I don't read either Bon Appetit or Food & Wine for similar reasons either.

I didn't realize that they'd tried to become Vogue-ish food porn in the meantime...not a whole lot of difference to me. I don't need class & status tied to my food, and that's probably why online food sites are so much more interesting. It's about the food, not Ina Garten's friends pretending to cook.

I love (loved) Gourmet for the recipes. I find them to be more exciting and reliable than those in other food magazines. I also subscribe to F&W and Bon Appetit and have subscribed to Saveur and Martha Stewart. But I am always most excited when the issue of Gourmet arrives. The recipes in Bon Appetit are decent but tend not to excite me as much. I like complicated, challenging recipes that don't rely much on shortcuts like canned broth (or at least don't encourage it -- I can make my own substitutions if I wish).

nope. sorry GMag

I will miss the idea of Gourmet, but even with a subscription (a gift for mother's day) it rarely engaged my attention.

Not at all.

I gave up on Gourmet after Ruth Reichl took over. To my mind, she ran the ship aground and the only thing worth reading any more was the Sterns. I wouldn't buy the magazaine for one column, though so it was strictly doctor's office reading. I much prefer Saveur for writing and Food and Wine for food.

I agree with mcwolfe. Ever since Ruth Reichl took over, the magazine has become more and more unreadable. I used to subscribe but I rarely even look at it anymore, even on the news stand. I'm even thinking about letting my Bon Apetit subscription expire. I get Saveur and Fine Cooking at home and I'll pick up a copy of Eating Well from time to time.

No. I'll sort of miss the idea of Gourmet, but I seldom read it, and never buy it. Mostly read passed on copies. Look at it, but find it fairly unreadable.

Sorry, but no. Used to love it, but you hardly notice the recipes anymore with all the articles, which just did not engage me very often. When i realized that in my pounds and pounds of torn out mag pages with recipes maybe one in 30 was from Gourmet, I stopped buying.
I can't get used to Bon A's new format yet, but at least the recipes are still a step above short cuts and the same tired ingredient combos.

I will absolutely miss Gourmet mag. I am a huge Ruth Reichl fan and I really felt that she helped bring food politics and slow food topics to light. I didn't see the articles as aspirational eating. The photography was absolutely gorgeous, but having good looking people in the photos doesn't deter me or make me more interested in any particular menus or recipes.

I will admit that I wasn't a subscriber anymore though. All of the content was online so it seemed silly to subscribe.

I'm guessing that Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie is done too now? Sigh.

I won't miss it but will miss what it used to be, which was a collection of excellent recipes and straightforward food reporting. Now it's an insufferable and pretentious assortment of food writing that is way overdone with ridiculous adjectives and descriptions and absurd photo spreads of waif-like models sprawling in the grass.

Like WickedGoodDinner, I will miss the "idea" of Gourmet. I'm hoping they don't remove the recipes from epicurious.com and see no reason why they should. I have one recipe in that database because it was published in Gourmet and my friend also has a real showpiece cake because her recipe was published.

It's sad but let's face it, how many of those frikkin yacht ads are moving merchandise these days?

YES! I will miss it. I was busy all day and didn't get to read the news today. I only heard it when I went to class and my heart sank! I can't believe that it is closing. Gourmet was like the status symbol for people who subscribed to it or if it was on their coffee table when guest arrived in their house for the Gen X . I read it since I was young, because I'm a food lover. I still read even as a culinary student! It's just crazy and it really shows how the economy is affecting the food industry.

I don't really know since I just bought a subscription a couple of months ago. It seemed like a great deal-both Gourmet and Bon Appetit for $24.

Oh, well!

Alas, Gourmet. I subscribed for over 20 years. I remember when it was one of America's best magazines, and actually was written for gourmets, not arriviste snobs who can't tell money from class. You remember, before Ruth Reichl decided to use her power as editor to show all those people who actually got invited to the Prom who was the big, important girl now! I remember reading Gerald Asher's (the finest wine writer writing in the English language) article every month, and wanting to go out, immediately, and buy bottles of the wine he was covering that month; she turned that into "six New Zealand whites to serve with Guacamole!". I cooked countless dishes from their pages, celebrating fresh fruits and vegetables of the season; recipes that called for asparagus in February and apples in March began to appear, along with overpriced hard-to-find (even in New York City!) ingredients. Sadly, Gourmet is now just another lifestyle rag, with wet-dream articles about restaurants you'll probably never eat in, and hotels you can't afford to stay in. Dangling all those expensive things in front of your readers and thinking it's "class" is really the same as leaving the label on the sleeve of a new jacket to show everyone that it really IS camelhair. Really! 100% See? See?

Gourmet is by far my fav. foodie mag! Im young but I love how long Gourmet has been around and its just classy, and has more culture pieces than the others.

I'll miss seeing Gourmet at the newsstand, but I've never consistently used it. I don't think I've ever made a recipe from it.

I've loved reading everyone's comments on this thread! They are so varied and approach the magazine from very different perspectives.

I feel the need to add something about the recipes from Gourmet, since I didn't comment on them originally, and many of you have said you never tried to make the recipes. Maybe it's like your first boyfriend, whom you never forget, but my most unforgettable recipes came from my mother, and my 2nd most unforgettable recipes came from Gourmet. Admittedly, most date from my 20s and 30s--and I won't tell you how long ago that was--but some I still make and which continue wow guests are:
1. Stuffed zucchini boats. People who hate zucchini rave about these twice-baked delicacies with sauteed zucchini and onions stuffed back into their skins with a bechamel, then sprinkled with parmesan and baked.
2. Hazelnut meringue torte. A frozen meringue dacquoise-like dessert with ganache spread on each meringue round, and coffee-flavored whipped cream (and crumbled meringue) filling between layers, decorated with shards of topaz-colored nut brittle and decorative lines of ganache. It's made in a deep pan with removable sides.This is a stunner. One of our friends asks for it every year on his birthday.
3. A cold roast beef salad with cooked potatoes and green beans, arranged in three intersecting triangles, decorated with red onions and topped with a very herby vinaigrette. I also make their recipe for a grilled zucchini and bow ties pasta salad with ricotta salata, basil, and tomatoes, which is my daughter's favorite salad of all time.
4. A frozen orange/Grand Marnier bavarian cream dessert made in a souffle mold with a removable wrap on the top so it looks like a souffle when you serve it. The sides are decorated with chopped nuts.

Well, I could go on. Maybe the actual recipes are fairly traditional (not the pasta salad, though), but for each of these old stand-bys I have a vivid memory of the accompanying photo, and I think that's what made the magazine so effective. The photos really made me want to spend a day recreating the dish. Sometimes I'd even trot out the photo when serving guests so they could see how close I'd come to getting it right! (Yeah--that's tacky. I don't do that anymore.)

Anyway, I will miss the magazine and the photos and the occasionally quirky essays, but mostly I'll miss that rush I used to get when I'd see an attractive photo, read the recipe, and decide "I MUST do this at home."

I, too, had let my subscriptions of Gourmet, F & W and Bon Appetit end this year. Read them once and then they were clutter, not reference material like they once were. As a teenager, I would babysit for a family that had year's of Bon Appetit mags filed away - I would spend the evenings (after the kids were asleep) copying recipes down to try one day. I think my love of food began when I picked up that magazine! I wanted to aspire to cook these things.

Maybe it's the recession but these magazines just seem out of touch with the way that people (even "foodie" people) live and cook these days. I don't read food magazines so that I can aspire to be like someone else (e.g. waifs, sitting at a white clothed table in the field over looking the Alps) who I will never be - I read them to inspire me to cook and try new things.

Would love to hear more about what magazines people are reading these days!

I always thought of Gourmet as a city foodie magazine. It brought the edge to the genre - moody, stylized photographs; poetic yet responsible food writing. I really think it was the only trail-blazer amongst food editorials, the only one pushing the envelope, saying that eating is a beautiful experience to be had and should be glorified. I loved it for its vision, for being a constant source of inspiration and not just in the kitchen, and for its respect of food from farmer to chef to homecook. I am heartbroken that Gourmet is gone. We have lost the one artist, leaving only formulaic, sales-driven, food fluff remaining on the stands. I am so fearful that this marks the end of the trail-blazing, that there will never again be published a food magazine that aims to create instead of copy.

I miss the Gourmet of my childhood but not what it turned into. My aunt always gave my parents a subscription for Christmas and I looked forward to it every month. I loved the column (You asked For It, I think?) where people asked for restaurant recipes, no idea why but it was my favorite. I stopped reading it for the most part when I moved out on my own and when I picked up a copy a year or so ago, I was really sad that it had turned into such a crappy snobby magazine.

For the past few months I've been reading Fine Cooking and like its combination of more simple recipes that I can make during the week along with more complex dishes. I actually made feta cheese last month following their instructions and it was incredible. It doesn't have restaurant or travel articles (although this month's piece on a winery in southern Ontario did make it seem like an appealing destination), so it isn't exactly like Gourmet. But as far as a food/cooking publication I find it enjoyable.

The last few issues, they've been trying new things, and as a result, it's been better, but no. I've had a subscription to both Bon Appetit and Gourmet for the last three years, and I can count on one hand the number of recipes I've cooked from the latter. I found the recipes disappointingly expensive and complicated and the articles a bit pretentious. Compared to Bon Appetit, it seemed the weak sister. And if that makes me part of the lower class masses, so be it. As it stands, Cooks Illustrated is better than both in utility, if not style.

I never bought the magazine, but I have some of the best of Gourmet books someone gave me. The recipes in them are interesting and they work. I get Cooks Illustrated. I find it useful albeit a little expensive... Gourmet Magazine looks kind of corny.

Miss Gourmet? Not so much. I love perusing epicurious.com so I'll still have access to the Gourmet recipe archives. It's a tough market. SE is a fantastic resource offering a diverse, interesting mix of chat, recipe and news. Will other foodie mags follow Gourmet to media graveyard? Time will tell...

As a long time subscriber, yes I'll miss Gourmet.
I learned a lot about new foods, trends and ingredients that were interesting.

Since I love to cook, I used some of the recipes for inspiration although some of them weren't practical in terms of getting some specialized ingredients.

As with many magazines, some issues were more interesting than others, but over all, I can't think of a magazine that I'm going to replace it with.

Gourmet also sponsored many events usually in NYC that gave me the impression that they were fostering new chefs, new food ingredients and trends along with technical information.

Although the economy hasn't help matters at all, let's put the blame where much of it belongs - Poor management from Conde Nast.

It seems they had no limit on spending when it came to their Hollywood parties etc.

They should have spent more time managing their valued parties instead of hobnobbing with the swells.

I've missed it every since Ruth Reichl took over.

No.

It seemed like a good idea, then issues sat wasted without me cracking the cover after the initial read.

Echoing what someone said earlier, does this mean that "Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie" will be canceled?

If so, that is extremely unfortunate. I've downloaded every episode onto my iphone (it's free on itunes) and they are always highly entertaining and educational.

i will definitely miss it. people who complain about ruth's direction in the mag tend to not appreciate the all-encompassing approach she brought in — i always loved reading every issue how someone would moan about how they don't want to read about the politics of their food, or how there's too many vegetarian recipes in the magazine now, on and on. well, guess what? food IS political, and the vegetarian plate tends to be the healthier one. deal with it!

i have learned so much from my subscription, and i will continue to learn from back issues. for instance, my next culinary mountain to climb is making your own mozzarella. i'm nervous and excited about the prospect, and this sort of thing is something you would never read about in bon appetit. i will not be subscribing to another food magazine for a long, long time from the looks of it.

Will I miss Gourmet Magazine? I have been missing it for months...since it became more about lifestyle and less about food. The Sterns and stories such as the effect of Walmart on food vendors were the only recent pages worthy of Gourmet. I have been holding onto my old issues and passing up the current ones.

Well since this is the first I've heard of Gourmet closing down so I am rather shocked. I suppose that in the effort not to have too many advertisements they were rather doomed. My subscription is up in a few months so I'm just lucky in that respect.

Not to be mean here but I suspect that there are not enough people out there that truly do love food so the politics of food and the planet is just not interesting. Which I find rather odd because with out the planet there is no food and without food… you get the picture.
I love a good recipe just as well as the next person but if an ingredient will destroy a chunk of rain forest then I can do without it, that kind of stuff I would like to know.

I don't think its being a snob to say chicken stock or any stock made from scratch is best and that each and every meat dish does not have to have cheese or the ingredient du jour.

There were issues of Gourmet that I would flag most of the magazine and there were issues where I could careless. I don’t know of any magazine that hits the mark each and every time with each and every reader.

I hate the glossy ads as well as everyone else but in reality that is the advertisers fault not the magazines. The truth is that all magazines are just whores for the advertisers.

With all that said, I would think that the owners would have looked into why they had to have all of their staff needing salaries that would allow them to live in Manhattan. Perhaps that may have been one of the problems. Food and the Internet are everywhere so why only use writers in NY??

I will miss the magazine and will be sorry to see it go, I do so loved those food pictures on the covers.

No.

About 60 to 70 percent of it became ads, and ads that looked like food pages but were not.

Another 5 to 15 percent were big pictures (although I am not saying I didn't like the pictures) and a lot of recipes...

Which left about 20 percent possibility of real article content for the rest of it. Canceled long ago.

I will miss Gourmet. I was wondering where my request to resubscribe was. Now I know. I recreated many of the recipes using affordable ingredients with great results. Substituting worked for me and my meals were not expensive. I was reading my local newspaper and boom there it was. Gourmet trashed. I could not believe it. Sure it had it's share of problems, but what publication doesn't. I am glad epicurious is still around though. Well thank goodness for Bon Appetit and Food and Wine. I subscribe to other food magazines also so there will be one less in the mailbox for my husband to complain about.

Oops, typo. My comment should have read: I've missed it ever since Ruth Reichl took over.

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