What is "Save Gourmet"

Honest answer: I don't know yet.  BUT, I have a lot of rough thoughts - here are a few:

• Gourmet closes - there is an outpouring of sentiment from loyal readers everywhere that this is a loss of a cultural icon. Gourmet was more then just FOOD.
• Gourmet, for me, struck the most delicate balance of marrying and fostering the accessible with the aspirational in terms of cooking and living.
• Every month, Gourmet expanded my culinary and cultural horizons. Food, my friends, is one of the things that makes the world go around and defines cultures. With the loss of Gourmet, who addresses this now? (yes, I know, Saveur, etc. I still feel like there is a void here).
• We as Americans now eat out all the time, barely sit together around a table and should be afraid of eating ground beef. SOMETHING has to be done about this. The readers of Gourmet -and the staff that created Gourmet - care about these things deeply. And, let's be honest, we are an unhealthy group of folks. Caring about the quality of your food, valuing a meal, creating it yourself...all of these things can actually help address these pretty major societal issues.
• My husband and I were looking for an apartment a few years ago. We live in NYC. Do you know how many places we saw - new beautiful buildings - that had NO space for a dining room table!! Honestly. The brokers all said the same thing "nobody eats at home anymore, and if they do, they sit in front of a TV but the family dinner...sorry you silly silly people, but the family dinner is a thing of the past." Well, I will tell you what - it is NOT a thing of the past in my world. We don't do it every night, but boy do we think it's important so we do our best to make it happen as often as possible. This, to me, is a breakdown in family values, in connecting with loved ones, in helping your children learn to communicate and learn to listen, learn to try new things, learn to have patience.

There is more to life than Chicken Nuggets, people. 

So this is all a work in progress - and honestly, I don't know if anything big (or small) will come of it.  But when I think of Save Gourmet I think of all of the above.  Saving Gourmet to me means saving values and ideals that I hope we hold sacred, that build our communities, that encourage exploration and curiosity. 

I would love your thoughts.

Comments

[Julie]

Very well said. I agree that Saveur is a different animal than Gourmet. While Gourmet took us all over the world, I think its focus was on chronicling American food culture. I saw you quoted in Kim Severson's article BTW...good job!

[Giovanna]

Yes, well said--especially your second point. To me, the thing Gourmet does (can't go past tense yet) so well is bringing so many different things together: holiday meals, elegant travel, quick meals, food history, food politics, food literature--I really don't know who else offers all this. Stories like the one about the health dangers of trans fats, or the plight of tomato slave labor reached people who would never have heard about them otherwise. Where will we go for such breadth now?

[Tatiana]

Just read the article in the NYT. I commend you. I am also following you on Twitter. Hopefully something good comes of this. Gourmet has been a bastion of light in this country that, as you mentioned in your post, does not let the dining room table disappear. I don't go out in this NYC mostly because of cost, but also, a very big also, because I can make it better at home. Gourmet has been a big part of that. Chicken nuggets be damned.

[tismoi]

And maybe what I am thinking about is accomplished by what Slow Food does - need to look into that.

[wendy]

something must be done to save GOURMET I have added your sites to twitter and FB

I grew up on this magazine. Shame on Conde Nast.

[rebbelgirl]

Lovely...
In the end we may not be able to save Gourmet, but we can boycott Bon Appétit and hit Conde Nast where where it hurts most---the wallet.

[jj]

I agree. I can do wwithout BA.
JJ

[[email protected]]

Anything to save Gourmet. I have been a subscriber since the '60's. Marion Jacobs