"Edible" Magazines for Local Eating

Organizing nationally while thinking and eating locally... a new model to promote local food traditions in an increasingly interconnected world? Take a look at Marian Burros New York Times story this week about the latest food magazine phenomenon.

August 29, 2007
How to Eat (and Read) Close to Home
By Marian Burros

NO one would ever mistake Edible Brooklyn for Edible Atlanta, though both are quarterly food magazines that share a corporate parent and a typeface. But the story titles in the latest issue of the Brooklyn version might flummox Atlantans. There is, for example, “Fresh Kills,” about a live poultry market in Williamsburg, and “Late Night Nosh,” which is self-explanatory, at least in New York City.

Meanwhile Edible Atlanta provides its readers with recipes for corn pudding and ways to cook kudzu, the bedeviling weed that has taken over the South. That story begins with a joke:

“How do you plant kudzu? You throw it and run.”

That line probably won’t play in Bay Ridge. But do Atlantans know that kudzu, free for the taking, can be substituted for grape leaves, kale or spinach? Or that you can make jelly from kudzu blossoms?

What began five years ago as one publication that tried to tell the citizens of Ojai, Calif., everything they ever wanted to know about the food and wine in their community has turned into a network of 33 Edible magazines across the country. Each of them offers readers culinary news tailored to where they live.

The company is spreading like kudzu, maybe faster. Seven more magazines are coming by the end of the fall, from Aspen to San Diego, not to mention Toronto. Negotiations for 12 others next year are in the works.

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