Heirloom Cafe Owner Launches Quarterly Print Food Magazine

The success of print media in San Francisco lately is downright inspiring: GFF Mag just partnered with Meredith Corp for national distribution, and now Heirloom Cafe owner Matt Straus is founding a quarterly print magazine called Kitchen Work that focuses on "thoughtful and beautiful conversation about our relationship with our gastronomy, from head to tail," he said.

Straus is funding the project himself — and isn't accepting advertising — so he must have great faith that the magazine is a necessary addition to the already very crowded editorial food world. He plans to differentiate the magazine by ignoring what he calls the "lightning fast and very flashy coverage of new openings and innovation." (He couldn't possibly be talking about Eater.)

Instead, Kitchen Work will focus on longform stories (around 2,000 words), bottle notes about particular wines, stories about "traditional recipes that are special to people," and more. "There are a lot of really interesting stories about food and about gastronomy and hospitality that presently don't have a home in the world of food and hospitality journalism," he told Eater. "There's a subtle longform treatment that I think is missing a little bit."

Kitchen Work is currently accepting writers (and subscribers!) and will debut its first issue by the end of the summer.