bon appetit, or how I receive strange covers and now eat high-flautin’ food
I think the cook-ability of the recipes and the weird orange blog on the front has to do with a redesign/reconcepting they did sometime in late 2007. I actually tend to find myself prefering Bon Appetit to (gasp!) Gourmet or Food & Wine these days.
A few months ago, I renewed my mediabistro subscription. I seem to go in waves of wishing to be a Real Writer, and God bless mediabistro, they’re there to take my $65 when I’m feeling ambitious. On the bright side, I also get Bon Appetit, Wired and New York Magazine, the latter of which I have sorely missed reading in the bathtub each week.
Of course, my mail is unpredictable as ever. Thus far, I’ve received NYMag’s “Look Book” Fashion Week issue, and yesterday received the cherry pie Bon Appetit, and today, some previous BA issue.
Anyway, I was planning to pen an a short piece about BA, starting with how surprised I was that the cover was lacking any “LOOK INSIDE FOR GREAT DELICIOUS FOOD YOU CAN’T REALLY COOK!” ploys on the front. Really, the cover I received has nothing on it, save the bon appetit name, the cherry pie (nom) photo, and the orange “comment mark” stating what page the recipe is on. It struck me as oddly bold and almost…I don’t know. Postmodern? Some sort of artistic statement? A true elitist “screw you”? We can put a piece of pie on the cover and nothing else and people will still buy it statement of confidence? But looking on the internet now, it looks like the cover actually is littered with the requiste tidbits of persuasion. I wonder if subscribers get a pristine, clean copy? Or maybe ba really is just saying “screw you” to me? Who knows, but I found it interesting.
Also interesting was the content. I never read bon appetit, seeing as how I always associated it with upper-crust snobbery, and, by proxy, foods I could never cook on my own. I was quite a foodie when I was a teen, and even then I assumed their recipes would rely heavily on things like Artichokes and Mussels and Wonton Wrappers, and other things that surely never would enter my childhood house. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find the recipes to be shockingly accessible. I found about 10 recipes that I am genuinely excited about and actually planning to prepare soon, which is more than even Real Simple can say. Granted, my tastes have grown a little since I was younger—a port-cherry tart now sounds delicious and not just pretentious — but the recipes genuinely sounded simple, and frankly, pedestrian (but delicious). Floppy-haired Andrew Knowlton even penned a recipe for a Michelada for goodness sake.
