If Gourmet has been crossing your feeds this week, there's a reason. The comeback, though, comes with a few asterisks.
The long-dormant food magazine Gourmet is getting a lot of buzz in food media circles this week—prompting a question that doesn’t have a simple yes-or-no answer: Is Gourmet back?
After 68 years in publication, Gourmet officially ceased operations in 2009 when Condé Nast shut down several titles during the financial crisis. At the time, Gourmet was known for its long-form food writing and involved recipes—often more aspirational than practical and not especially aimed at busy home cooks.
Now, more than 15 years later, the name is resurfacing in digital form.
What We Know About Gourmet’s Return
This new version of Gourmet is launching as a paid newsletter, created by a small group of journalists who discovered that the Gourmet trademark quietly lapsed in 2021. The group successfully claimed the trademark with plans to start the newsletter. The project is not affiliated with Condé Nast and is being positioned as a worker-owned publication, funded by subscriptions rather than advertising.
According to its founders, the revived Gourmet plans to publish one feature and one recipe per week, with an emphasis on time-intensive, impressive cooking projects. It’s a deliberate contrast to the quick, easy weeknight recipes that dominate much of today’s food media—and a clear signal that this isn’t trying to compete in the weeknight-dinner space.
Visually, the reboot is also distancing itself from the old magazine. The new logo is bold, lowercase and intentionally quirky—more art-school newsletter than traditional food publication—which has already sparked some side-eye from longtime readers.
So, is Gourmet back? In name, yes. In practice, it’s a brand-new digital experiment wearing a familiar title. Only time will tell how it fits!
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