Lucky Peach :: The Final Issue :: 'The Suburbs' Summer 2017

Many gorgeous food and lifestyle magazines have stopped print circulation and are sticking to online writing. Like Life & Thyme, and now quarterly journal Lucky Peach has shuttered as well (and up for sale).

Founded by Momofuku’s David Chang, former New York Times journalist Peter Meehan and McSweeny’s alum Chris Ying, for six years, Lucky Peach has curated the best sort of food writing around. As with all businesses, something idealistic always gets eroded by pragmatism. I suppose there comes a time when creative forces begin to diverge and can't reconcile, and financial decisions become harder.

For Lucky Peach, at least there's one fourth and last cookbook 'All About Eggs', and then there's the twenty-third and final 'the suburbs issue' in print. I've faithfully bought every issue, although not always on time. Took out my older issues of Lucky Peach, shook the dust off, and proceeded to ziplock and seal every one of them and stuff them into boxes. They then go into storage.

So I went out to buy the final three issues of 2017. Took my time to read them. In the final 'the suburbs issue' this summer, it's pretty much US-centric, so while I didn't grow up in suburban US, many points are still hilarious and familiar.

'17 Suburban Things' on page 42 saw a number of contributors sharing seventeen things they know to be true about the suburbs and the food one can find there. Which has nothing to do with the one's proximity to a P.F. Chang's. BUT, Ryan Healey's No.8 in the article is a poem about finding umami and defining it at 'Cheesecake Factory'. Hurhurhur. Okaaaay. No.11 by Rob Engvall stated 'The Car as Bar', mainly talking about Connecticut not having an open-container law. :P

I really enjoyed John T. Edge's 'Salad-Bowl Suburbs' — The nuevo American South on page 80. The illustrations were done by Carolyn Figel. It talks about the South as the region with old prejudices and the highest immigration rates, and along with that, suburban dynamism drives the growth of various cultural expressions. This of course includes food when "a new generation of immigrant cooks emerged".

Over the last six years, wrenching changes transformed the South, beginning with the black freedom struggle and concluding with the assimilation of new immigrants. New traditions blossomed and cultures showed new facets. Despite inhospitable immigration laws, a true new Southern cuisine now flourishes, driven by recent arrivals who came in search of agriculture and construction jobs and stayed to reinterpret chicken cafés and fish joints. 

............ 

My son's generation now weaves new narratives about what it means to be Southern, about what it takes to claim this place. Given time to reconcile the mistakes my generation made with the beauty we forged amid diversity, his generation might challenge the region of our birth to own up to its promise.

John T. Edge's 'Salad-Bowl Suburbs' — The nuevo American South;
illustrated by Carolyn Figel.