Feast Magazine

St. Louis foodies are surely familiar with Sauce Magazine, which covers the local food scene, including restaurant reviews, recipes, feature articles on hot ingredients or theme meals (say, Sunday brunch), etc. Who doesn't love that? It's available in various spots around town (though not nearly as available as I would like), and also by subscription.



Apparently it's doing so well that competition has sprung up. There's a new magazine out this past week with its first issue called Feast. I picked up a copy a couple days ago, and have now poked through it enough to offer something akin to a review.






Pros:
- Mouth-watering photography
- Smart move: picked a St. Louis classic for their first cover story (White Barn Burgers, though I've never been there)
- Lots of product reviews: blenders, grill baskets, etc.
- Products are in a huge range of prices. For example, there's a $7.99 grater, and a few pages later there's a $17,595.00 lamp. (Really, $17K for a lamp??)
- Lots of recipes to try for yourself
- Provide lots of "available at..." resources. Places to go: Veritas Gateway to Food and Wine, Provisions, Wine Chateau, Friar Tuck, Winslow's Home, UMA, even Target and World Market!

Cons:
- Many recipes feature totally obscure or hard-to-find ingredients. Witness: pepper jelly, Creme de Violette liqueur, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, yellow Chartreuse (what is this?), passion fruit concentrate, Domaine de Canton, Flor de Cana, cornichons (I looked this one up), quail egg yolk. I'm pretty sure most of the things on this list that I've never heard of are alcoholic beverages of some sort. But really, how 'bout some recipes we could make without having to run all over town for ingredients
- St. Louis classic for the cover story? Yes. Likelihood that a large percentage of their readership lives in the neighborhood of that St. Louis classic? Not high. Which doesn't mean people won't drive there just to try it; I might (for lunch). But a little pandering to the readers never hurt a magazine.

On the whole, I'd say definitely more good than bad. Honestly, though, a food magazine would have to be really bad for me not to find anything enjoyable in it. Feast has lots to enjoy; unfortunately for the recipes, though, I'm going to be enjoying them with my eyes and my imagination, rather than my taste buds.