The Ravenous Guide to Food Writing

Food Writing on the Web

Squidoo: Great Food Writing! by Jeff Bergman

Check out this Squidoo lens for another take on Food Writing.

Saveur Magazine

The finest food magazine around. Always the first place I start for any research. Authentic cooking from around the world.

Slow Food Web

Round the clock food news review from the folks at SlowFood.com.

The Food Insect Newsletter

With articles like "Fried Grasshoppers for Campouts or at Home", "Food Insect Festivals of North America", "Some Insect Foods of the American Indians", "Collecting Ant Pupae for Food" and "Hunter-Gatherers Were Sometimes Very Labor-Efficient" you'll be glad that they don't have glossy photos, but if you're anything like me you'll be utterly transfixed.

Hungry Magazine

An upstart online food magazine by Alt-minded foodies who know their stuff.

Waitrose Food Illustrated

An unknown gem! Beautiful photos, fine writing.

Here's a little lagniappe:
The History of Italian Restaurants in Britain

The Hungover Gourmet

The material is funny, smart and just what you'd expect.

Lagniappe:

High Steaks Showdown
by Dan Taylor

Forget scrapple, Tastykakes, soft pretzels and anything with the words "Pennsylvania Dutch" in front of it. The glorious, magnificent cheesesteak is - hands down - the Philadelphia area's main contribution to the American culinary landscape.

Vegetarian Times

My favorite vegetarian magazine. They go beyond recipes and restaurant profiles. They have real food writing. For example: as I write this there is an Fly-By Food Terrorism
When US troops stormed Al Qaeda's Afghan caves after September 11, 2001, they stumbled onto sobering evidence that the terrorists were thinking of more than flying airplanes into skyscrapers. Hundreds of documents weredevoted to one subject: American agriculture.

Food and Wine

Of Gourmet, Bon Apetit and Food and Wine, Food and Wine is the only one I enjoy. That might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it kinda is.

BBC Food Articles

Topical food writing on par with The New York Times. As an overall food and cooking portal it's much better organized with sections for recipes, how-to's, celebrity chefs and much more.

The Food Tunnel

Defunct archive of food articles from Urban Desires Magazine.

Chow Magazine

Bon Apetit for 30somethings, only better.

Chili Pepper Magazine

You'd expect Chili Pepper Magazine to be really cheesy, but it's only a little cheesy. The real surprise is that there is usually a pretty damn good article in every issue. And by good I mean that it's interesting and I learn something.

Cooking for Engineers

Exactly what you would expect. A no nonsense approach to cooking coupled with inveterate curiousity. The writing isn't always great but the content is.

These are guys who love nothing better than to spend the morning cooking bacon four different ways and reporting back on it.

My Favorite Essays

(at least the one's available online.)

The Bakeoff by Malcolm Gladwell

First published in the New Yorker, this essay tells the story of two teams of commercial food development experts trying two competing approaches to developing a successful, mass-producable healthy cookie. Also available in PDF.

The Ketchup Conundrum by Malcolm Gladwell

First published in the New Yorker, this essay looks at why no one's been able to improve on Heinz 57 Ketchup. Also available in PDF.

If you really what to improve as a cook, read this article and learn to love the concept of "Amplitude".

Amplitude: know it, love it, live it!

Q & A with Adam Gopnik on Fergus Henderson and Alain Passard

New Yorker critic Adam Gopnik discusses two chefs with two very different approaches to their cuisines.

The Food Critic at the Table by Adam Gopnik

New Yorker Critic Adam Gopnik looks at the genre of food writing.

Girardet After Girardet by Colman Andrews

Saveur editor Colman Andrews chats and dines with the world's greatest chef as he heads into retirement.

Recipes here.

An English New Year by RW Apple Jr.

Saveur takes on a proper New Year's feast with Falstaffian wine dealer Bill Baker.

. . . I guess I had better stop and talk a little about bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as ''mad cow disease''. It was already a topic of discussion in Britain last New Year's, though it had not yet come to rival the weather and the serial infidelity of the royal family as the mainstay of conversation. I called Bill, a contrarian and a paragon of political incorrectness, at the height of the mania and asked what he was having for dinner that night. ''Beautiful sirloin, old boy,'' he replied. ''Got it for nothing.'' He views the British beef crisis the way modern investors view a 200-point drop in the Dow-as a buying opportunity.

Recipes

Red Velvet Cake and the Neiman Marcus Cookie Hoax

Patricia Mitchell looks at an old urban myth that has shown up as a new urban myth and tosses in a fine, well written Red Velvet Cake recipe into the mix.