Thanksgiving Showdown: Chris Kimball vs. The Vorticist Cabal!

Renewed apologies for the lack of posts here. A combination of lots of  travel to good restaurant cities, and a looming food-centric holiday have me paralyzed. But I suspect my feeling is not rare. A recent lunch (deets tk) with an actual professional food writer confirmed that it is the day that incites dread, because it comes every year, and unlike, say, oncology or dance music, not much changes in a year. So the inevitable Thanksgiving story looms like an unwritten verse in "Blowing in the Wind."I sympathize. The first Thanksgiving in the Age of the Cod, I put up a few thoughts,  the next year, posted only when provoked, and I am glad I do not have an editor this year pushing me for a fresh and lively angle on the turkey.

Fortunately, there are brave souls willing to stir things up. Namely, a bow-tied Vermonter, a skinny Garrison Kellior manque', a Silas Lapham for the 21st century -- Christopher Kimball! Over to SE, he sat down with Ed Levine and dropped this gem:

How is your coverage different from the other food magazines like Gourmet, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine?

The editors at the other food magazines write for their friends and themselves. They feel compelled to do something different every year because they're bored. People want mainstream American cooking, and that's what we give them.

The image of Conde Nast food titles and their rivals forming some kind of avant-garde coterie is pretty good. I maybe even wish it were true. But it does seem like Kimball is steering the CI brand more in the direction of Taste of Home. There may be more here to read as you wend your way over the river and through the woods, but if not, keep an eye out for reportage on those crazy Vorticist* Thanksgivings they write up at Bon Appetit.

*And a speedy recovery to Isis.

Comments

[Isis]

BLAST surgery but BLESS the Cod!

[cinetrix]

"They feel compelled to do something different every year because they're bored." So THAT'S the reason Kimball served up tagine upon tagine of Mediterraean/Middle Eastern/Turkish inflected food at that holiday party we went to? I'm all about the olives, as you know, but that was just bizarre.

[Rose's Lime]

"ATK: We take the fun out of food!"

I'm impressed with his spartan recipe for brined turkey that puts nothing in the brine but salt. I've put all kinds of crap into the water that has little to no impact on the flavor, but I keep puting crap in there because its fun.