Shopping For Foodies: Trey Popp’s Holiday Gift Guide, Part 4

We do everything we can at Foobooz HQ to keep local eaters up to speed on everything that’s going on in the Philly food scene. But there are unexplored riches in the offline realm, too. So maybe it’s time to push past Bon Appetit and Lucky Peach and subscribe your favorite foodie to a magazine he’s never heard of but might totally dig. It’s a wide world out there, folks. Here are a few corners that are worth exploring:

Spenser takes its title from the Middle English word for butler or steward, and combines photo-heavy articles on things like sorghum production and bourbon barrel charring with recipes for offbeat stuff like black walnut and fresh hop pesto.

Fire & Knives is a British quarterly that prides itself on “humour and caustic wit” in articles considering topics like restaurant bathrooms, pesto-hatred, and the breakfast-hour travails of a personal chef.

Swallow is an omnivore’s delight, skewing eccentric with pieces on Russian dairy products, Mexican tomato growers, the scene in New Beijing, and the occasional interview with a cod fisherman.

Chickpea is for the vegans out there—and now we know that Philly’s got plenty.

Kinfolk slants in a lifestyle direction, shooting for “one-third cookbook, one-third narrative tale and one-third international adventure.”

Remedy Quarterly aims for the hipster locavore recipe-hunter’s heart; the latest issue tagged along with the Outstanding the Field in-situ dinner crew, shared their recipe for tomato and shishito pepper panzanella, and offered a maple-pear-brandy hot toddy as a nightcap.

White Zinfandel is the crazy-bearded uncle of the food-mag world. Its font-fetish layout brims with stories considering errata penitentiary hunger strikes and Tito’s Cookbook, a tome written by the founding president of the former Yugoslavia and never translated into English. Remember Lucky Peach’s apocalypse-themed issue? That was like White Zinfandel with training wheels.

Trey Popp’s Holiday Gift Guide Part 3

Trey Popp’s Holiday Gift Guide Part 2

Trey Popp’s Holiday Gift Guide Part 1