Lucky Peach

Lucky Peach is a new quarterly food magazine from David Chang, celebrity chef of the Momofuku (Japanese for Lucky Peach) restaurant group and published by McSweeneys. I have always been a lover of magazines from Highlights to YM to my current five subscriptions (The Economist, Sunset, Elle, Entertainment Weekly and Anthology…clearly I am confusing to magazine marketing firms). Lately, since discovering Anthology at a great local magazine shop, I have been on a major twelve dollar magazine binge. Twelve dollars for a magazine seems crazy, it’s more than a paperback book, but these magazines tend to be more art/story-based/aspirational to the life you want to be living than your standard magazine. Lucky Peach is a perfect example of this. The first issue is focused on ramen (from instant noodles to a journey to Japan to eat at the most famous ramen restaurants) and is both a celebration of foodie culture and an exploration of how silly it is to spend hours talking about your food. There are recipes, articles and beautiful illustrations. I found myself smiling, laughing, nodding and ready to make some soup while reading this magazine. I particularly enjoyed the transcription of a conversation between David Chang, Wylie Dufresne and Anthony Bourdain about the current state of food and Ruth Reichl’s review of various types of instant ramen (somehow it was comforting to me that one of my food idols loves instant ramen too). Lucky Peach seems to be at all my favorite shops and many publications have posted reviews of it from the San Francisco Chronicle to Time to NPR.