assistant editor Kelly Kochendorfer phoned seeking samples of our boiled peanuts. A year prior, we’d hatched a plan to sell the Southern staple by mail-order, setting up shop in a small warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina. Even our closest friends and family members were circumspect—if not downright dismissive—so Kelly’s request offered validation:When the call came, we happened to be in New York City and offered to deliver the goods to’s SoHo HQ.
Resolute though we were to make the Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue a success , that delivery also served as our initial exposure to the busy hum of an editorial engine devoted to kitchen culture, where people lived and breathed food for a living. It got us dreaming beyond peanuts, of both the boiled and Styrofoam shipping variety.contributors.
— Matt and Ted Lee, Authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook and Hotbox: Inside Catering, the Food World’s Riskiest Businesswas Christopher Hirsheimer’s photography. Her casual, naturally lit shots revolutionized the genre and made us all look at food in an entirely new way.Saveur has served as the industry’s chief culinary anthropologist. For 25 years, the magazine has shared with food enthusiasts a most generous gift, by discovering the best real food on Earth, and then allowing the people behind that food to tell their stories in appetite-inducing color.
Then, suddenly, I was real tight with Dorothy and Colman and Christopher. OK, so maybe I didn’t actually know them, but that was the magic of their magazine—it made you feel like you did. You traveled with them to Oaxaca and Paris, New Orleans and San Francisco. You were elbow-to-elbow with them at their cutting boards as they brought home all sorts of recipes.