The first Gourmet magazine I ever set eyes on was at my friend E’s home when I was in the ninth grade, a very long time ago. It did not belong to her mother, Mrs. J. It belonged to her father, Mr. J. The latest issue was always carefully placed on the side table next to his chair. If her father wasn’t home, I would plop myself down into his big, green leather chair, prop my feet up on the footstool, and spend hours slowly turning each page. I was fascinated by the illustrated covers, the photographs of elaborate table settings, and the travel articles. I loved to study the back section with its postage-sized black and white ads for restaurants around the country. The listings for New York City were the best. Now here was a city that had so many restaurants that the directory had to be divided by neighborhood: Midtown, East Side, West Side ... The mini reviews of each restaurant would boast how this was the best place for “fill in the blank.” A more cynical reader would have stopped to compare the paid advertisements along the outer edge of each page to see if there was a direct correlation between advertisers and good reviews. This fourteen-year-old didn’t care.
This was a glimpse at what gourmet dining was all about. An exotic place so many worlds away from my suburban hometown. The magazines that were fanned out on the cocktail table in my home had titles like Better Homes and Garden, Sunset, and Family Circle. Perfectly respectable magazines but I would bet that not one of them had a recipe calling for sweet butter or a spring form pan in much the same way that there were no “How To” craft articles in Gourmet. The Gourmet editorial staff assumed that if their reader wanted new napkin rings that they would simply purchase them. They would not entertain the idea of making them out of cut-up paper towel tubes covered in foil. Decorating ideas were limited to whatever you could glean by carefully studying the tasteful table settings. I am not sure that they had a buyer’s guide in the back to help you out. If you didn’t know your Spode from your Lenox or your Waterford from your Baccarat, you were out of luck.
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