I am fortunate to be part of a vibrant Google group (that has since spun off into an excellent Substack), where weekly conversations can run the gamut from intense national security discussions to analyzing Taylor Swift’s latest album. Several years ago, someone in the group asked for recommendations for a solid cooking magazine, and many folks (myself included) chimed in with a vote for Bon Appetit.
You can tell the BA writers really love to cook, and they want you to love it, too, was an apt description of the mag offered by one group member, to which I heartily agreed. How could I not? As an avid home cook and a loyal BA subscriber, who eagerly awaited the monthly arrival of each new issue to my mailbox, I relished reading it cover to cover, and gaining inspiration for new dishes to share with family and friends.
I can’t remember when that BA recommendation conversation took place, but it had to be pre-2020, a year notable (to my mind, and undoubtedly the minds of other avid home cooks) not only for the pandemic, but as the “Year That Bon Appetit Imploded.” At the end of last year, as I finally pulled the trigger and canceled my annual auto-renewal for 2023, I thought ruefully of that conversation and of the magazine BA had once been. But I had to admit it: after dozens of issues of idly flipping through the “new Bon Appetit,” as they tried to rebrand what is
