Tanya Bush<\/a>, 29, a pastry chef and cookbook author. They enlisted Noah Emrich, 33, a designer who became an equal partner. In the debut issue, they described their publication as \u201ca hedonistic exploration of history, pop culture, literature, and art through sweets.\u201d<\/p>\nIn its first seven volumes, Cake Zine stuck to cake, cookies, pie, candy, fruit and bread, giving contributors wide range for literary ruminations on the themes. The most recent issue included \u201ca reckoning with orange soda\u201d by Chris Crowley and \u201ca deconstruction of the immigrant fruit-plate-as-love-language trope\u201d by Giri Nathan. With Steak Zine, the editors asked writers to venture into savory territory.<\/p>\n
The people at the event couldn\u2019t help but consider the political implications of the meat on Funny Bar\u2019s menu and in Steak Zine\u2019s table of contents. \u201cWe\u2019re in a very reactionary moment,\u201d said Leah Abrams, who had written a short story for the magazine about a judgmental maitre d\u2019. \u201cRed meat, Liver King and the dairy industry swing-back is all part of that. To take it on in a cheeky way is quite smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the small stage, Abarbanel told the crowd that Steak Zine was \u201cnot a blanket endorsement of eating red meat,\u201d but rather \u201ca question that we posed to butchers, vegetarian chefs, and many of our favorite writers of many dietary persuasions, to ask them what red meat has symbolized for generations and how it\u2019s being perceived right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Readers included Swati Sudarsan, who got laughs with an essay about her supposedly vegetarian mother\u2019s secret hamburger habit. Then came dessert, which was included in the ticket price.<\/p>\n
Lo Alalay, a 30-year-old chef, had spent 12 hours the previous day hollowing out 200 lemons. Now scores of them, each crammed with white chocolate lemon mousse and brown butter graham crumble, lay on tables.<\/p>\n
There was a polite rush. As some people savored the deconstructed lemon meringue pies, others inspected Funny Bar\u2019s menu.<\/p>\n
Ms. Abrams, a vegan, was among those who departed for Superiority Burger, a nearby vegetarian restaurant whose owner was among the contributors to Steak Zine.<\/p>\n
Later that night, at a table marked \u201cReserved,\u201d the Cake Zine crew spoke of parties past. Kacie Paganelli, who produces the magazine\u2019s events, recalled a pie-eating contest from 2023 watched by several hundred spectators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was bad,\u201d Abarbanel said with sigh.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my favorite thing,\u201d Paganelli said. \u201cHands behind their backs, tied.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all volunteered \u2014 they volunteered!\u201d Abarbanel interjected. \u201cThe theme was humble pie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was humbling pie,\u201d Emrich offered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 150 people gathered in Manhattan on a recent evening for the debut of Steak Zine, a special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5859,85927,1070,85928,82288,75,84,83,9,24,56,63,84479],"class_list":["post-217864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-beef","tag-cake-zine-journal","tag-food","tag-funny-bar-manhattan","tag-magazines","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-parties-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}