Vittles / 2

Vittles Issue 2: Bad Food

A magazine about modern terrible food and culture

 

With the talented contributions of: Joe Zadeh, Tania Sanchez, Munir Hachemi, Johanna Hedva, Rukmini Iyer, Sheena Patel, Pete Wells, Helen Rosner, Chitra Ramaswamy, Andy Ho, Joyeta Ng, Joké Bakare, Ozoz Sokoh, Sharanya Deepak, Lily Kelting, Amel Mukhtar, Melek Erdal, Lauren J Joseph, Morgan M Page, Ms Pistachio Paradise, Chris Jones, Alim Kheraj, Andy Hayler, Adam Coghlan, Niloufar Haidari, Kelly Pochyba, Saira Banu, Emefa Ansah, Joel Golby, Karl McDonald, Matthew Bye, Simran Hans, Zarina Muhammad, Fiona Hyde, Feroz Gajia, Rahel Stephanie, Ixta Belfrage, Jonathan Nunn, Sing Yun Lee, Sinae Park, Kenneth Lam, Lou Kiss, James Clapham, Ibrahim Rayintakath, Svabhu Kohli, Ben McMahon, Ula Zuhra, Azra Sadr, Georgia Rudd, Wunmi Onibudo, Julia Sanches, Ella Bucknall, Peter McAteer, Jules Scheele, Beatrice Barr, Joy Yamusangie, Lauren Martin, Alex Brenchley, Lorenzo D’Alessandro, Olivia Sterling and Hannah Ekuwa Buckman.

 

This magazine began as a modest project about awful food and quickly spiralled out of control.

 

About a year ago, my colleague Sharanya Deepak mentioned that she was tired of South Asian food writing that was only about grandmas, who all seemed to be amazing cooks. This well-meaning food writing trope – in which a whole culture must be introduced to a readership through its tradition or sense of hospitality – had to die. Sharanya’s idea was an online supplement that ignored the virtuous aspects of cuisine and instead focused on the havoc that is regularly wreaked across South Asia in the name of food: pink sauce pasta, Szechwan sauce, the alliance of capital and stupidity that leads to a Jamie’s Italian in Delhi, or Chicken Cottages across Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In short: the exact opposite of nourishing grandma food. Eventually we got so invested in the idea of ‘bad food’ that we lost the South Asia focus and it became this magazine: 150+ pages of slop dedicated to terrible food in all its guises.

 

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A magazine about modern food and culture