About 150 people gathered in Manhattan on a recent evening for the debut of Steak Zine, a special issue of the food-focused literary journal Cake Zine.
The cover, designed to resemble a perfectly marbled cut of beef, was red meat for the people in the crowd, who had paid $20 apiece to pack into Funny Bar, a steak restaurant and jazz bar on the Lower East Side.
“It’s trendy to like food again, even though Ozempic is here,” said Khuyen Do, the writer of a newsletter called the Cakewalk, who arrived toting a purse decorated with a plate, a fork and a knife.
Cake Zine was founded in 2022 by two friends: Aliza Abarbanel, 30, a writer and former editor at Bon Appetit, and Tanya Bush, 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 “a hedonistic exploration of history, pop culture, literature, and art through sweets.”
In 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 “a reckoning with orange soda” by Chris Crowley and “a deconstruction of the immigrant fruit-plate-as-love-language trope” by Giri Nathan. With Steak Zine, the editors asked writers to venture into savory territory.
The people at the event couldn’t help but consider the political implications of the meat on Funny Bar’s menu and in Steak Zine’s table of contents. “We’re in a very reactionary moment,” said Leah Abrams, who had written a short story for the magazine about a judgmental maitre d’. “Red 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.”
From the small stage, Abarbanel told the crowd that Steak Zine was “not a blanket endorsement of eating red meat,” but rather “a 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’s being perceived right now.”
Readers included Swati Sudarsan, who got laughs with an essay about her supposedly vegetarian mother’s secret hamburger habit. Then came dessert, which was included in the ticket price.
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.
There was a polite rush. As some people savored the deconstructed lemon meringue pies, others inspected Funny Bar’s menu.
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.
Later that night, at a table marked “Reserved,” the Cake Zine crew spoke of parties past. Kacie Paganelli, who produces the magazine’s events, recalled a pie-eating contest from 2023 watched by several hundred spectators.
“That was bad,” Abarbanel said with sigh.
“That was my favorite thing,” Paganelli said. “Hands behind their backs, tied.”
“They all volunteered — they volunteered!” Abarbanel interjected. “The theme was humble pie.”
“And it was humbling pie,” Emrich offered.
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