Our new partners: The Art of Eating

Thoughtful, erudite, opinionated pieces from a publication that helped shape my own work

Published May 17, 2010 12:01PM (EDT)

We're proud to announce our new content partnership with the Art of Eating, the beautiful, thoughtful, idiosyncratic, opinionated and erudite food quarterly by Edward Behr. Every other week or so, they'll be sharing with us a favorite from their archives or something new that's been piquing their interest and itching to be put into the world.

We're especially proud to be the Art of Eating's online partner, as it continues to focus its own energies into producing the most beautiful print object it can.

But it's from a personal perspective that the honor feels most extraordinary. As a young cook, I was guided to the Art of Eating by a great mentor, and in its pages I discovered whole new ways of thinking about food. Through 10,000-word histories of the baguette to long, wandering explorations of the meaning of Sicilian food, it exposed me to the notion that, like politics, all food is local. In a world where the "locavore" is a rare exception rather than a rule, that seems like a strange thing to say. But reading the Art of Eating, I learned that great cooking and great cuisine is more than ingredients and technique, but the product of people, passionate people grounded in their place and time.

That lesson has guided my own work for years. Please welcome the Art of Eating to Salon, subscribe, enjoy.


By Francis Lam

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam.

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