Food & Wine

Great food and superb wines tempt me. Thus, I am an aficionado of food magazines. Three magazines (Food & Wine, Gourmet, Southern Living) nested in my mail box monthly and all of them satiate my longing for great food and wine.

Food & Wine is supreme. It promotes dishes that are 1) fast, 2) healthy and 3) can be made ahead and each recipes gives you the time needed to prepare, the recipes' calories, fat and the carb. count.

I really like the table of contents "Recipes" page, where all the magazine's recipes are categorized much like a cookbook (Soup&Starter, Salads&Vegetables, Pasta, Grains&Breads, Fish/Shellfish, Poultry, Meat, Desserts).

When there are recipe photos they are good to very good (more photo would be a welcome addition) thus enticing you to attempt the recipe.

One suggestion for improvement would be a column of "best buys" wines or "Good wines under $10". Most of the wines that are profiled are, for me, expensive (i.e. 1/2003 issue `Ice Wines' $52, $75, $65 $17, $35, $40).

Food & Wine is excellent in all regards and highly recommended.


Good Eats, Fine Drinks, and Having Fun   January 18, 2005
Bryan Carey (Houston, TX)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

Food and Wine is a pretty good magazine for those who enjoy the finer things in life when it comes to unusual cuisine and expensive fermented beverages. This publication is usually very long- over 250 pages- and its packed full of recipes, travel excursions to wine growing regions, and general facts about different varieties of wine and where to find them.

One thing about this magazine that surprised me at first is the emphasis on the food. I know the magazine is titled "Food and Wine", but my initial impression was that this would be a magazine devoted entirely to wine with occasional mention of the foods that go with wine. It isn't like that at all. The food sections and the recipes are just as important as the featured wines. Recipes are so frequent, in fact, that the magazine even has an index located near the front with all the recipes listed by food type, showing the page number to turn to for the recipe.

Besides the frequent talk about food and wine, this magazine is also dedicated to entertaining. I have heard it suggested that this magazine should change its name to "Food, Wine, and Entertainment". It would make sense, because conviviality and high- class partying are certainly an important component of this magazine.

There is one thing about Food and Wine that I wish was different. I appreciate the factual information and I like the personal touch that you find in some of the stories about winery owners, chefs, and the like. But I think Food and Wine gets a little too sidetracked from time to time in its reporting. For example, it is common to find stories that talk about subjects like home decorating. This would be fine in a magazine about home design, but I don't think it belongs in a magazine like this.

Overall, this is still a good publication. Lovers of great eats and fine drinks will enjoy it the most. It's worth taking a look, if nothing else, just for the recipes. Even if you're not a frequent imbiber of the fruit of the vine, there is still something of interest to be found in the pages of this magazine.



a must for the gourmet   October 26, 2001
Reese E. Kolsky (seattle, washington United States)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

a friend got me subscription to food and wine for my birthday last year, and i look forward to it every month. it's great because it's set up for a variety of different kinds of readers. recipies are easy to find, and organized into several different categories, great if a reader wants to use the magazine as a cookbook. food and wine also has great bargain & collectable wine tips, and fun interviews with chefs, from famous to obscure. if you're into regional cuisine, food and wine covers more than the typical napa valley/provence circuit.


First Rate   January 24, 2002
Davis (Alpharetta, GA United States)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

This is the perfect magazine for those who like to cook and LOVE wine. Most of the recipes do not call for advanced cuisine knowledge. Many are designed for the fast-paced lifestyle of the USA.

The wine segments are very current and accurate. I live within 2 hours drive of Champagne, Mosel, Rhine, and Alsace wine regions. There have been many articles focusing on these areas and I know from experience that the reporting is first class and highly reliable.

Cheers


Yummm   June 11, 2003
FrKurt Messick (Bloomington, IN USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Hey, hey, hey -- Grilling in the USA! This is the lead article in in the first issue of Food and Wine I ever got, and as the summer approaches, and I am ready. I just pulled my grill out of the garage last week, as the temperature is warming up. This is what I love about this magazine--they are timely, and somehow know what I'm thinking.

Yes, I know--many are thinking about grilling now. This doesn't lessen the value of the magazine for me; it comes monthly with seasonal dishes and ideas for parties, formal and casual, as well as general items that would be appropriate all year round. The grilling article this month concentrates on atypical grilling possibilities -- grilled salmon with dilled mustard glaze; grilled Maryland soft-shell crabs with tartar sauce; grilled pork tenderloin fajitas; barbecues leg of lamb; many other things, including the grilling essentials (from taste-oriented requirements such as dried vines and herbs to practical needs such as mitts and a brush).

That issue of magazine also had An Ode to Beer & Baseball, another apropos article, with the subtitle which reads:

'Forget Chardonnay. The only drink that can do justice to baseball is a lukewarm, sudsy, mass-produced domestic beer.'

Now, you might not agree with this (I personally would prefer a higher-grade beer with my low-standard hot dog at the ballpark), but from this you can see this is not just a 'woman's magazine', as so many magazines of this sort get labelled.

The magazine is well-organised, well-pictured (I like to see the way food is supposed to look), and well-written; it has an index of recipes in the back of each issue, separated by food types--soups and starters, salads, eggs, vegetables, pasta etc., fish & shellfish, meat & poultry, desserts, condiments & sauces, and (in this particular issue) salsas. They also index types of cooking (formal, fast, etc.), wine recommendations and reviews, and places.

Past issues included a gatronomic tour of the restaurants of San Francisco, as well as Amsterdam. One previous issue did a 'tour of the islands', which took in not only Caribbean islands, but also Tahiti, Madagascar, and Australia. There is always at least one international article in Food and Wine which discusses both local cuisine and restaurant options, as well as how to recreate some of the dishes at home.

The section on wines is always of particular interest to me. A recent issue included a useful guide to 10 common blunders with wine, which includes storage tips, glassware cleanliness (don't destroy a good wine with a glass which has a soapy residue!), serving sequences, and more. The preceding issue kept with it's island theme by going over the best wines from islands by wine experts from 12 top resorts; earlier in the year articles included tips for getting best buys at restaurants (how to really read a wine list), how to buy to build a collection, and how to determine value in the confusing world of French wines.

One article I highly recommend comes from the February 2000 issue, The $100 Dinner Party, which discusses chef Julia Serrano from the Picasso restaurant in Las Vegas and his construction of an elegant dinner party for 10 that only cost $100. Then it has pages of wonderful tips for those on a limited budget (like poor struggling seminary students!) on how to build good and memorable menus on a shoestring.

I was given a subscription to this magazine as a gift from someone who despaired of my Domino's diet, and I have maintained the subscription due to the wonderful variety of articles, the interesting writing style, and the temptation the magazine inspires each month.

Bon appetite!