60-70 years?  Not a bad run.  Lauded and loathed in turns, Gourmet was at the center of food writing for a very long time. It was aspirational stuff – most of us were never going to experience culinary travel like that or be in a position to compare and contrast the top ten truffle oils. But it was beautifully written aspirational stuff. Well, mostly. And maybe not quite recently. It was still good – but in my opinion, the writing had peaked and in chasing the last possibly dollar, they were trying to “play down” a bit.

On some level, Gourmet was “your mom’s cooking magazine.”  It was there if you needed it but it was slightly out of step with what seemed to be going on in the real world, on the ground. I don’t mean the “real world” of food tv – Gourmet couldn’t have cared less about that and I bless them for it. But real world as in what real people were doing food wise. Back to that aspirational thing. Maybe it was not achieving that balance of real life and aspirational. Don’t know. If I did, I would be the highest paid person in magazine publishing. I will say they did some find stuff on food and the environment – stuff I really wasn’t finding anywhere else with such a broad base.

But it was there. It was central. It was the magazine all the chefs wanted to be in, talking about the places we all wanted to go and making it all sound and look gorgeous. People ate it up. You can see how people loved it by looking at how people are reacting to the announcement that it’s going away.

So with all these people are singing Gourmet‘s praises and mourning its passing – you might wonder why it was losing money with so many dedicated fans. Because dedicated fans do not translate necessarily into dedicated subscribers and – here at least – the subscriber base it not the money maker. It’s the advertising.

And I understand what’s happening in the magazine publishing arena. I do. I recognize the bottom line when I see it. Is it fair to cut Gourmet and keep Teen Vogue? Not to many Gourmet readers but if Gourmet‘s advertising was down 50% and Teen Vogue‘s wasn’t – well, Conde Nast isn’t running a charity so it makes business sense.

Doesn’t make the loss of Gourmet suck any less. In the same way that knowing why doesn’t make the decision to close down Domino (for which I still haven’t forgiven them) suck any less. But at least traces of Gourmet will remain through the material online at Epicurious and in their book publishing – unlike the utter and complete disappearance of Domino.

It doesn’t surprise me that they stuck with Bon Appétit – after all, they just underwent a massive print and online redesign last year (which readers may recall I wasn’t overwhelmed by). And strictly speaking they weren’t aimed at the same target so while they were both about food, their readers were different, responded to different advertising, etc.  If Gourmet was covering things only just slightly out of reach, Bon Appétit was taking what was within reach and showing you how to make it sing. It also has an aspirational slant to it – especially any of the gift round ups – but they temper it with accessible, attractive options and alternatives. You don’t feel like you are stuck looking in through the window. You’ve found a side door.

Now you’re confused, right? Don’t be. Don’t get me wrong – I may not like the redesign of Bon Appétit (I don’t. It never grew on me and I can’t see it doing so in the future) but I do get quite a lot out of reading it. The content is good and I can ignore the appalling font, color and photographic choices if the content holds up.

I liked Gourmet. Maybe it was a bit stuffy at time. Maybe I felt it didn’t speak to me directly about how, what and why I eat what I eat . But it was interesting, well-presented, clearly thought out stuff. It was reliable without being flashy. Unfortunately, reliable doesn’t seem to be enough these days.