For our annual “eat drink local” issue, we bring you stories from both Manhattan and Brooklyn. You can browse the full Manhattan-centric table of contents here. Check out even more stories from this issue over on Edible Brooklyn.
Here’s the issue’s opening words from our print editor, Gabrielle Langholtz:
Hello, dear reader. Or should I say, goodbye.
It’s nearly 10 years since I wrote the editor’s letter for the launch of Edible Brooklyn — and over seven since I typed Edible Manhattan’s first. All told, I’ve edited 80 issues of Edible, a good thousand stories on everything from the contents of John Flansburgh’s fridge to the birth of Roberta’s pizza, from rooftop hives to upstate seed savers, and from the past of downtown bear-meat markets to the future of Harlem’s La Marqueta. If that’s not a dream job, I don’t know what is: I’ve marveled at my good fortune almost every day of this decade. Brian and Stephen, I thank you.
But nothing lasts forever and the time has come for me to pass the storytelling reins to new staff who will steer this thing far into the future.
After years chronicling the most meaningful food experiences in Gotham, my next project has me looking up from our city sidewalks and out from sea to shining sea. That’s because I’ll be birthing Phaidon’s next by-country bible, America: The Cookbook. So I’m turning my focus from Coney Island franks and East River oysters to Hawaii haupia, Florida stone crab, Kentucky burgoo, Carolina shrimp and grits, Michigan wild rice, Tennessee hot bird and Oregon chanterelles.
But first, I was lucky enough to cook up one last issue for you. Looking at the lineup now, the balance feels fated, tied up in a burlap bow.
Long lovers of craft, we profile Proletariat, a punky little beer bar on St. Mark’s Place that looks like a dive but pours some of the most unusual brews on Earth. Big boosters of the locavore pour, we get to know Juliette Pope whose leading list at Gramercy Tavern offers the world’s top wines — including many made from New York grapes. I’ve been lucky to publish some of the field’s brightest writers, and in this issue, hero Paul Greenberg investigates the pairing of wine and oysters (“If it’s the right wine, the oyster changes it, but in a good way”). Ever obsessed with innovation, we check out Nextdoorganics, one of the start-ups reinventing the way we’ll all buy food in the future. And we dig in at New York’s two pilot Edible Schoolyards, inspired by the Berkeley experiment where I volunteered shortly before commissioning the first issue of Edible Brooklyn. See what I mean? Dream job.
To quote an old adage, we’ve come a long way, baby. And to paraphrase another — you only spend a decade building a brand once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
In the karaoke bar of life, I’m going out on this one: I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Thank you.
Gabrielle Langholtz, Editor
