Edward Behr and the Quarterly That Changed Food Writing

The publication

Edward Behr started The Art of Eating in 1986 as a one-man, self-published quarterly newsletter from rural Vermont. The format: long-form essays — usually 5,000-10,000 words — on a single regional food, ingredient, or producer. A single issue might cover a specific Italian cheese, a vinegar producer in Modena, the chestnut economy of central Italy, or the actual differences among French regional Roquefort variants.

The magazine ran for over 30 years. Behr published it himself, mostly without advertising, mostly by subscription, mostly via mail. It never had more than a few thousand subscribers. It quietly influenced almost every serious food writer of the next generation.

Why it mattered

Behr wrote without commercial pressure. The magazine carried no advertising for most of its run; the subscribers paid enough to keep it going. This gave Behr the freedom to write at the depth a topic actually required. A piece on French butter ran 8,000 words. A piece on a specific olive oil producer covered the producer's family history, the grove, the press, the cooperative economics, the chemistry of the oil, the relationship between local cuisine and the oil's flavor.

Most food media cannot do this. The advertising model demands shorter, lighter, more product-oriented pieces. Behr proved that there was an audience for the deeper version, and that the audience would pay subscription rates to keep getting it.

What it taught the next generation

That serious food writing can be regional and patient.
That a single producer or a single ingredient is enough subject matter for a long essay.
That the politics of food — labor, land, succession, economic viability — belong inside food writing, not as a separate genre.
That food writing can be both personal and rigorous.

Bill Buford's Heat (2006) and Dirt (2020), Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal (2011), and the better long-form food pieces in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Lucky Peach all show Behr's influence — sometimes explicitly named.

The books

The Art of Eating: Best Stories and Recipes from 25 Years of the Most Original Voice in Food (2011). The compilation.
The Food and Wine of France (2016). Behr's regional reference.
50 Foods: The Essentials of Good Taste (2013). A list of 50 foods Behr considers genuinely important, with essays on each.

The compilation volume is the entry point for anyone who didn't subscribe to the magazine.

The Lucky Peach overlap

The other late-2010s food magazine that came closest to Behr's seriousness was Lucky Peach (2011-2017), founded by David Chang, Peter Meehan, and Chris Ying. Lucky Peach was more eclectic, more visually inventive, and had advertising; it lacked Behr's patience but added range. The two publications were complementary, not competitive.

Both are now reference points for what a real food publication can be when the writers and editors are unembarrassed about depth.

Reading

The Art of Eating: Best Stories and Recipes (2011).
50 Foods (2013).
Lucky Peach back issues (some are still available secondhand).

The Art of Eating

Edward Behr's The Art of Eating — both the quarterly journal
he edited from 1986 to roughly 2020 and the broader project of
serious food writing it represented — is one of the more
specific American food publications of the past 40 years.

The journal was unusual in several ways:

Ad-free. Behr refused advertising throughout the journal's
run, which kept the writing independent of food-industry
pressure.
Long-form. Articles were 2,000 to 8,000 words; the journal
was for readers who wanted depth rather than recipe-and-headnote
briefness.
Geographically specific. Behr returned repeatedly to small
food producers in specific regions — a specific cheesemaker in
the Auvergne, a specific olive-oil producer in Provence, a
specific wine cooperative in Sicily.
Producer-focused. The journal centered the people who made
food — farmers, fishermen, bakers, cheesemakers — rather than
chefs or restaurants.

What Behr was doing

The journal's project was, in Behr's own framing, the
documentation of food in its specific contexts. Not "Italian
food" but the cuisine of a specific village in Liguria. Not
"French cheese" but the work of a specific cheesemaker in
Aubrac. Not "Mediterranean diet" but the actual eating habits
of a specific Greek island.

The level of specificity made the journal one of the best
references for serious cooks who wanted to understand what
traditional food production actually looks like. The articles
were sources, not summaries.

The cookbook

Behr's The Food and Wine of France (2016) is the closest the
quarterly's project came to a single book. The book covers
French regional cooking with the same producer-focused
sensibility. It is one of the better English-language
references on French regional cuisine, alongside Patricia
Wells's work.

His earlier The Art of Eating Cookbook (2011) is the
companion volume — recipes drawn from the journal's articles.

What the project changed

The serious food magazines that emerged in the 1990s and
2000s — Saveur, Gourmet in its later years, the various
specialty publications — drew on the Behr template. The producer-
focused, specific-place, long-form approach became a recognizable
style.

The Slow Food movement's Slow magazine and the various
contemporary publications (Whetstone, Vittles, the various
regional food magazines) all owe something to Behr's project.

The journal's closure around 2020 marked the end of an era for
specific kinds of independent food publishing. The successor
publications are good but the specific combination of
ad-free, producer-focused, geographically-specific long-form
that Behr maintained is rare.

What to read

Back issues of The Art of Eating are available through the
journal's archive. The articles age well; they are not news
but documents.

The Food and Wine of France (2016) is the entry point if you
want a single book.