It sounds a bit odd, but food has never been more hip and popular than it is now. Not that it was ever unpopular, but mainstream culture does seem to have developed a newfound fascination with all things food over the last several years. There’s no shortage of cooking shows on TV from those hosted by celebrity chefs to those featuring people one day hoping to become celebrity chefs. Farm to table restaurants are popping up in cities across the country and items like avocado toast have become almost as popular hashtag items as kittens on Instagram.
A number of television-based food magazines have launched over the last several years, hoping to take advantage of people’s most-recent love affair with food. Out of the food magazines, there’s really only one that stands alone as a true original, a classic — Bon Appétit.
Bon Appétit is largest and oldest of the traditional publications dedicated to all things food, and in a time when a lot of magazines are struggling, it is thriving. Part of that credit should go to Bon Appétit’s editor-in-chief, Adam Rapoport, who has been leading the magazine since 2010 and weaves both high-society cocktail trends and food sustainability politics with kitchen tricks and baking tips for working mothers and novice chefs.
From what utensils to buy to how you can recreate that incredible dessert you had at the bistro you can’t recall the name of, Bon Appétit’s goal since 1956 has been to deliver a broad and most importantly, delicious variety of food to its audience. In addition to its regular features on 30-minute meals, the magazine functions as map for foodies on where to visit when scouting out their next food-cation. Most recently, they featured the ins and outs of Toronto’s restaurant scene, highlighting trendy bars like Alo and Patois, a restaurant that fuses both Jamaican and Chinese flavors.
“Everything you see you should want to eat or buy,” Rapoport told The New York Times. “That’s the job.” And it’s a job that Bon Appétit has been doing very well.