magazines

We asked you what food magazine topped your must-read list this year, and we have a winner!

A big congrats to Food Network Magazine, our 2010 champ with 29 percent of the votes! The Food Network's glossy has come a long way since debuting in 2008. The mag features some of our favorite chefs and a variety of tasty, creative recipes like antipasto skewers, the Singapore sling, and samoa tartlets.

We want to recognize runners-up Bon Appétit and Food & Wine for also having a great year. And don't forget to check out all our Best of 2010 coverage!

I headed to New Orleans to celebrate Halloween this year, and while I was down in the Crescent City, I also spent a couple days at Voodoo Fest. When I tired of the rowdy MGMT and Ozzy Osborne crowds, I snuck off with some red beans and rice to the "Cinema" lounge, which was furnished entirely out of upcycled materials. I fell hard for these stools made of rolled up offBeat magazines (NOLA's local music pub). Each stool was made of a few dozen magazines or newspapers, which were held together with a nylon belt or strap.

Always suspicious, I tested out the stools myself, and they were super sturdy! Of course, you could also use them as side tables for books and small accessories. In any case, I must say they're clever and easy on the eyes! What do you think?

Earlier this month, Condé Nast announced major changes over at Bon Appétit. The media corporation is moving the Los Angeles-based food magazine to New York City without longtime Editor in Chief Barbara Fairchild. Today, Women's Wear Daily reports that Adam Rapoport, the style editor at GQ magazine, is expected to fill Fairchild's shoes. Although Condé Nast has yet to release a formal statement, the announcement should come early next week. Rapoport has been with GQ for 10 years; before his time there, he edited the restaurant section of Time Out New York and wrote for the James Beard Foundation's publication office. Rapoport is sure to bring a stylish edge to the magazine, and I'm excited to see how he remodels the content of Bon Appétit.

I don't know how shopping in pajamas could be such an epidemic that grocery chain Tesco made a policy against it, but it happened. Now the UK activist group Object is fighting back. Not because it supports shopping in PJs, but because it believes it's hypocritical to sell sexed-up magazines, like Maxim, while prohibiting jaunts through produce in fuzzy slippers.

Since March, the group's been staging protests at the store's London locations. Protesters in pajamas dart through aisles and cover up laddy mags with papers that say "Lad mags lie about women." Then to ensure their heard, they start a conga line while chanting "Hey, ho, sexist mags have got to go" until security guards conga them out the door.

I admit, I detested the very idea at first. Public displays of altruism make me uncomfortable. But Object has created meaningful change in the past, making it more difficult for strip clubs to get licenses in England (previously, it was as hard as opening a karaoke bar) and raising awareness about the realities of prostitution.

So what does Object ultimately want? "A society free of sexism," according to its website. It exists to challenge the sex-object culture, and the mainstreaming of porn in men's mags is its ground zero. To see its members in action, see a protest video below.

The New Yorker just released its iPad app and it already has fans, especially those iPad users who were waiting for this electronic version of the venerable mag. But complaints about magazine titles on the iPad so far seem to center on the lack of a subscription service, which means buying the iPad version of your favorite magazine at issue prices close to newsstand offerings.

If you are a print subscriber, you may feel like paying $5 or $6 for something you already own is a bit much. So what if you want to choose between those glossy pages or the iPad download? After the break, a list of some popular magazines that offer iPad versions of their print issues, and what sort of extra content you can expect if you choose to go the electronic route. Check out the list when you read more.

This morning, Condé Nast announced a new series of special issues of the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. Quite simply, the three "limited edition" mags will be a compilation of recipes pulled from the Gourmet archives.

The first to be released is Gourmet Quick Kitchen; it features 81 fast and easy recipes with new photos, tips, menu suggestions, and wine pairings. The 128-page tome will have no advertisements and was edited by a Gourmet editor, Kempe Minifie. The public will be able to pick up a copy of Gourmet Quick Kitchen for $10.99 at newsstands starting on September 7.

While I've definitely missed Gourmet, I'm not sure I see the point in the recipe booklets.

Aren't most of Gourmet's recipes online at Epicurious and Gourmet? Still, I'm sure I'll be checking it out. How about you? Would you buy a Gourmet magazine cookbook?

Source

I often read magazines while lunching, but now Condé Nast wants readers to lunch at its magazines' restaurants. The media empire, which owns Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New Yorker, among others, is licensing its magazine brands to a buffet of media-inspired restaurants.

Magazines and restaurants are frequent companions, from power-lunch destinations dominated by media types to hotspots run by magazine moguls, including Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn and Monkey Bar and the new Lion restaurant, backed by Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko. Other famous experiments in restaurant-media domination include Playboy's Playboy clubs and the garish ESPN Zones. But Condé Nast is remaking the model.