Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture
With its diverse voices and eclectic mix of scholarship, fiction, poetry and exciting visual imagery, Gastronomica reveals food as an important source of knowledge about different cultures and societies.
Gastronomica evolved out of my dual life as a food writer and a Russian scholar. I had been researching the architectural drawings made by the great French chef Carême for monuments in St. Petersburg and was thrilled to discover numerous points of comparison with the pièces montées he created for the table. So I wrote up this research and published it in one of the leading journals in the Slavic field, The Slavonic and East European Review, based at University College, London. Great, except that virtually no one with an interest in food saw this article; it was as though it had dropped into a black hole. That got me thinking. I figured there were plenty of scholars like me, in other fields, who were similarly in need of an outlet for their work in food studies. So, during a sabbatical year in 2000, I began to dream of a journal that would offer food enthusiasts from all sorts of fields a venue for new thoughts and new findings, a place where we could engage in meaningful dialogue, share our work, and build upon each others’ research.
At the same time, I was aware of the frustrations of popular food writers constrained by the demands of most trade magazines, which don’t allow for in-depth exploration of the issues surrounding food. I hoped that, for different reasons, chefs and food professionals might have more to say than opportunities to say it; and that novelists, poets, and other articulate food amateurs might eagerly welcome the chance to expand our thinking on the subject of food.
In conceptualizing Gastronomica, I set out to create a publication that would distinguish itself from the glossy food magazines with their unfailingly upbeat lifestyle stories and staged photographs. I envisioned not a corrective—I enjoy reading these magazines and often contribute to them, too—but a way to examine both the deeper and the darker sides of food: the eating disorders, the marketing that fosters obesity, the politics of hunger, the hunting and butchering of primate species, the emerging biotechnologies that can both serve and harm us. I wanted to create a magazine that would use food for thought, provoking people to think seriously, widely, and deeply about what goes onto their plates. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the fun of food. It seemed crucial that Gastronomica celebrate the aesthetics of food – through poetry and prose as well as through stunning artwork, including photographs, original illustrations, and reproductions of drawings, paintings, and installations. Gastronomica has featured naked girls both fat and thin cavorting with pasta; tomato worms consuming a tomato only to be consumed in turn; and beautiful still lifes of fruit that reveal its sensuality.
Gastronomica aims to straddle our differences, particularly the historical rift between academic inquiry and what the popular press writes about food. It seeks not the middle ground of consensus but an area of liberation, where food is treated neither superficially and thoughtlessly nor by means of a narrow, dry vocabulary. The result is an admittedly eclectic (maybe eccentric) journal. To name only a few of the topics that we’ve covered in the past several years: parrot-eating in the Renaissance, the ethics of eating apes, the diet of sumo wrestlers in Japan, cooking shows as pornography, wine and global warming, the cultural ramifications of the Atkins diet, genetically modified foods in Zambia, and the meaning of terroir. We’ve also published dozens and dozens of book and film reviews, cartoons, and quirky pieces ranging from notice of a Viennese orchestra that plays musical instruments carved out of vegetables, to the publication of an ancient Persian text that advocates frightening game before slaughter to ensure the most delicious flavor in their meat. Playing it safe is not what Gastronomica is about.