Cherry Bombe Is A Food Magazine For The Coolest Woman In Your Life
"They are the counterfeit Chanel bag of fruit," reads a line in a story about Luxardo Maraschino cherries near the front of the debut issue of Cherry Bombe, a downtown food magazine disguised as an uptown women's fashion magazine that launched earlier this week. A copy of the issue was placed in my hand by the mag's smiley Editorial Director Kerry Diamond, who also in her spare time runs two formidable restaurants and a café in Carroll Gardens with her partner Rob Newton.
It's a revealing line, the one about those coveted Italian cherries. First, it's funny. Cherry Bombe is funny. Supermodel Karlie Kloss graces the cover holding a bowl of cookie batter, a slight wink to the whispers surrounding her day job. Kloss' recipe is featured within, road tested by Momofuku pastry chef Christina Tosi. So you know it's legit.
Back to that line about the cherries, it's also smart — and culinary to the core. No fashion mag is writing about mysterious stone fruit. But Bombe is culinary to the core. There's a cool interview between Bon Appetit editor Christine Muhlke and noted food stylist Victoria Granof, who once wrangled lobster claws and turkey necks for Irving Penn. There's an interview with the director of the documentary Oma and Bella and an essay about how a writer's mother introduced the flavors of Hyderabad to suburban Connecticut in the late 1970s. The world's hungriest visual artist Jennifer Rubell gets a loving profile, as does NYC chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton.
Diamond, a media and beauty executive who once assisted rock journalist Legs McNeil at SPIN, met Bombe's talented Creative Director Claudia Wu while they worked together at Harper's Bazaar. The duo has set out to create a publication that doesn't just celebrate women in food and fashion (the book is pretty much dude-free), but to align style with sustenance and "things that nourish the mind, the eye and, of course, the stomach." There's a smoky photo essay profiling a Tennessee pitmaster. A female pitmaster, which is as hard to find as a magazine dedicated to covering the subject.
So how do you find Cherry Bombe? It's available on newsstands and indie bookshops around the country starting May 1. But the easiest way to score a copy is to subscribe via Kickstarter.