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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.

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.

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.

No.

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

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.

Here's a post from epicurious.com regarding Gourmet and the future of epicurious. I'll be checking back for more info on epi and if they will be expanding.

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.

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.

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'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 collect fruit and vegetable sticker labels.

What a wonderful menu! Feel like visiting DC, chefs?