Lucky Peach Issue 3

by David Chang (Editor), Peter Meehan (Editor), Chris Ying (Editor)

The Chefs and Cooks issue, the third installment of Lucky Peach , attempts to answer a few pressing What does it mean to be a cook in today’s age of celebrity chefdom? Where is cooking headed? How did the molten chocolate cake make its way from Michel Bras’s restaurant in Laguiole, France to the Wal-Mart freezer case? What happens, exactly, when bartenders spank mint? The answers arrive from all over the place Mario Batali recalls the early days of Food Network; Meredith Erickson spends an afternoon with Fergus Henderson; Naomi Duguid visits street vendors in Chiang Mai. We talk to cooks from Fort Bragg to Paris to the South Pole. There are recipes for barbecue-chicken pizza and pasta primavera, and Christina Tosi’s upside-down pineapple cake, just in time for Mother’s Day.

Lucky Peach is a journal of food writing, published on a quarterly basis by McSweeney’s. It is a creation of David Chang, the James Beard Award–winning chef behind the Momofuku restaurants in New York, Momofuku cookbook cowriter Peter Meehan, and Zero Point Zero Production—producers of the Travel Channel’s Emmy Award–winning Anthony No Reservations .

Genres: Food, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food Writing, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2011

Reviews

[Kerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The "Chefs" issue means most of the articles are written by chefs, name-dropping other chefs. There's some element of bashing Food Network personalities, although didn't food TV bring us chef-as-celebrity and over-the-top glorification of food that brought Lucky Peach into existence in the first place?

[Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the last Lucky Peach I will get to read unless I magically get my hands on issues 1, 2 or 19. I'm sad such an amazing (and the only proper) literary food mag is no more. At least we'll always have the recipes (and Ugly Delicious).

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not being a chef, aspiring chef, or line cook, I had little to connect with in this issue of McSweeney's otherwise extraordinary food magazine; the appreciation of good food is more relevant to me than the appreciation of working your way up the restaurant ladder the hard way, the revelry in name-dropping, or the reminiscence of late nights with world-renowned chefs whose name and work I am personally unfamiliar with, being a cognitive scientist in the middle of Canada. There was too little of the former in this issue, and I'll be frank in saying that certain pieces had the ring of in group back-patting, and more pretension than most other McSweeney's material I've read-- though I appreciate that those in the restaurant industry would connect with the sentiments contained within.

The bafflingly off-topic postmodern essay on the decline of Austrian art and politics was most difficult to stomach, in terms of both style and content. It didn't actually seem to have much to say about cooking, apart from painfully banal analogies to the decline of cooking decried (with more heart and honesty) by Chang in the article preceding it. It struck me as a lazy and self-congratulatory inclusion.

Likewise, the series of interviews with various cooks from all walks of life was a disappointment. I'd come to expect more from Lucky Peach than the same stock, facile interview questions put to 6 different people; more personal and involved questions would have served the segment immensely.

Some highlights for me were the recipes (of course) and Karen Liebowitz's piece on the psychology of "personal" cooking (of course).

[Hans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucky Peach Issue 3 (Cooks/Chefs) : Cooking :: Generation Kill* : War

Cooking is a daily battle in a never-ending war. These are the men and women who show up every day and feed us. From the celebrity chefs to the lunch lady and everyone in between, the issue gives a view into a lives lived in kitchens around the world, what it takes to get there and what it takes to stay there.

Several articles discuss the trickle-down or straight-up plagiarism of food ideas. The short essay "Nothing New Under the Sun" in Anne Fadiman's book Ex Libris, which I was reading at the same time, provides a nice little echo of this topic.

Lucky Peach is a stack of pages filled with amuse-bouche. You'll find a couple that may not strike your palate, but all are worth trying.

*David Simon's televised version. I'll admit I didn't read the book...I've read plenty of others and might get to that one some day too.

[Kristina Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This issue is all about chefs. Had I read it when it was originally published, I might have enjoyed it more: at the time, I think I was still buying in to the notion that chefs are the new rock stars. Now I think the restaurant industry has gotten way too precious: I'm happy to just eat the delicious meal you've prepared for me, without hearing what the dew point was at the organic farm when the heirloom tomato in the coulis under my squab was personally harvested by the chef's assistant, who spent a year staging at a restaurant tucked into a hidden valley in Tuscany before the chef would allow him the great responsibility of bringing that tomato from vine to kitchen -- well, you get it. Menus have become exhausting, and I'm kind of over chef worship. Still and all, this is a magazine worth reading, and I'm happy to dig into the next issue. Even if most of the articles are written by chefs.

[Stephanie H · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the things I love best about "Lucky Peach" is that it isn't a normal food magazine. It doesn't have gorgeous food porn (though it does have some very interesting photos and awesome illustrations). It doesn't have heartfelt stories or suggestions on how to set a perfect table. Hell, it doesn't even have many recipes, to be perfectly honest.

It's a food magazine for chefs or chef wannabes. Yet for an issue dedicated entirely to the discussions of chefs and the celebrity chef phenomenon, I felt this issue missed the mark. Whereas most of the issues feel like David Chang is jacking off for 166 pages (in the most appealing way) this one felt like way more ego stroking than most. It was well written, it had some great recipe ideas, and it was on topic (which is more than can be said for issue 2) but it just didn't grab me.

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mehhhhhh.

With each issue of this journal I grow more and more bored. I perked up briefly when I came across a one-page interview with a chef at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica (doesn't that sound like it would be fascinating?), but the questions he was asked were mostly uninteresting, and so I ended up disappointed in even that. I don't hold out much hope for the 4th volume, and I'm definitely not planning on renewing my subscription to this sucker. :(

[waits4thebus · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an interesting magazine. Articles with weird perspectives & recipes for things I would never dream of. Plus art I love. This, the third issue has less typos than the last, so it feels like they are getting their sea legs. Looking forward to more!

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magazine is amazing. I usually like to tear magazines up, but this one is so full of interesting articles and features that it's too much like a book for me to do cut it up. It's worth the $12 for an individual issue.

I'm definitely going to sign up for a subscription.

[Mike Riess · Rating 4 out of 5]

First issue of the magazine I've read- excellent content, mostly entertaining and engaging save one or two flops I couldn't make it through the first page of. Glad to buy a year long subscription and support a fantastic local publication.

[Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This issue was a return to form after what, I thought, was a fairly weak second issue.

[Amy Peavy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I ever completely read this one...