McSweeney's Food Mag Coming Your Way

Lucky Peach is profiled on the Wall Street Journal.

From the story...

Messrs. Chang and Meehan opted to add the print component to expand on some of the ideas they first had with the "Momofuku" cookbook. In effect, they reversed the modern trend and created an iPad app with an accompanying magazine, rather than vice versa. "We wanted to capture things in writing that wouldn't be able to make it on an iPad five-minute video and basically that was the impetus and catalyst for the magazine," Mr. Chang said.

To launch the magazine, they turned to McSweeney's co-publisher Chris Ying, with whom they had worked on the food section of McSweeney's 2009 one-off newspaper, the San Francisco Panaroma. "[It's about] appealing to people who generally like food but like other things as well, such as writing and art," Mr Ying said. "Lots of people who care about food also care about other things."

The first issue of Lucky Peach includes a noodle-driven Japanese travelogue by Messrs. Chang and Meehan; essays by Ruth Reichl, Anthony Bourdain and John T. Edge (on "Seventh-Ward Ramen"); and the 1919 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki short story "The Gourmet Club." There's also a recipe for the famous caviar-in-a-soft-boiled-egg that Mr. Chang serves at Ko, Momofuku's reservations-only prix-fixe restaurant on First Avenue. And while the magazine features an as-told-to essay by chef Harold McGee, with illustrations, about alkaline noodles—the kinky yellow noodles used in ramen—and alkalinity in food, the app offers an appearance by Mr. McGee explaining the subject while sitting at a teacher's desk that appears to be flying through space.