A seat at the table
Announcing Grubstack, a live video food festival featuring Yotam Ottolenghi, Clare de Boer, Notorious Foodie, David Lebovitz, Nicola Lamb, and more
We are a ravenous bunch, hungry for food 24-7. We snack on food-creator videos like they’re fancy hors d’oeuvres, gorge ourselves on cooking shows, and can spend hours savoring long-form essays on Malaysian cuisine like they’re fine old wines.
It didn’t used to be this way.
Once upon another time, food was little more than sustenance. There was no conversation about the provenance of the fish on your plate. No one wanted to know the name of the chef at the restaurant round the corner (or to spend half an hour watching their knife skills on your phone). You ate the food in front of you, preferably with good people around. That was how it was.
The world of food was smaller back then; certainly less entertaining and intellectually bountiful, tied up at both ends by the few who felt entitled to talk about it. It was the land of the great and the godly—the eminent food writers at one end, the celebrity TV chefs at the other.
But not anymore. We are 30 years into a food revolution that has seen cookbooks become as pacy as pulp fiction. Social media stars being made out of teens experimenting in their mum and dad’s kitchen. The world of food writing and restaurant reviews has been handed over to anyone who has an interesting point of view about food, while videos about food—gonzo tasting trips, cook-alongs, documentaries—are now as entertaining as a Hollywood film.
Nowhere is this shift more evident than on Substack, where the world of food and the new power players within it are pushing boundaries, galvanizing communities, and revolutionizing the food industry.
Here, you’ll find both established names exploring new ideas and fresh new voices tearing away at the established ways of doing things. Here is a place where food people can express themselves and their ideas about food exactly as they want—through writing, of course, and in podcasts, videos, live videos, and community chats.
You can step inside the mind of
as he shares his thoughts on AI and the future of restaurants (as well as his secret cauliflower recipes). You can join on his search for the perfect tavern burger. Or watch social media cooking sensation as she whips up her famous “cheese with noods” from the comfort of her own home. And subscribers can connect directly with these creators in comments and chats, asking questions and sharing feedback as they go. In this way, Substack not only brings you, the audience, closer to your food heroes than ever before—it also brings your food heroes closer to you.Whether they’re Michelin-starred chefs or budding food vloggers, creators are reimagining what the future of food media looks like. Take Jonathan Nunn’s
, which started life as a food newsletter but has gone on to become one of the most culturally en pointe magazines in the world. Or ’s community chat channel, which has become the hottest place in town to discuss everything from what cookware to buy to how to pick the best winter veggies. Some of the world’s most celebrated food writers, like , , and , share the actual places they pay to eat at, while ’s has become as vital as the Michelin Guide for figuring out exactly where to get a table in Paris.My point is this: food, and the conversations and content being created around it, has never been more exciting. And we want everyone to be part of it.
To that end, next month we’re hosting an event we’re calling Grubstack: a live video food festival taking place from March 13 to 15 showcasing the new frontier of food media.
Listen in as New York super-chef
chews the fat with culinary guru . Join and as they discuss their lives and careers in food. Explore the Spanish food markets of San Sebastián with , and listen in as tells the tale of how he left the world of cheffing to become a Substack sensation. This is just a taste; stay tuned for the full lineup and schedule. Every session will stream live in the Substack app, bringing a food festival to the palm of your hand.This is a golden age of food media—one that feels warmer, more intimate, more ambitious, more inclusive, and, most of all, more democratic than ever before. Come and take your seat at the table, starting on March 13.
Host your own Grubstack event
If you’d like to participate in the food festival by hosting your own live video, send us an email at grubstack@substackinc.com. We’ll send you customizable assets and a playbook to help you promote and host a successful event.
Where is Department of Salad? Did you totally forget who got your platform all that press in the early months?
Ok… So you are creating another Food Network. Yay. The problem with having The Biggest Names on Substack is that it creates the same scenario as a clique…the cool kids’ lunch table. A caste system. No. Not fun.
This is what so many Substack contributors and subscribers came here to avoid in the first place. No editors, no corporate overlords, some are “nobodies” (sorry, not meant to be derogatory) who have lots to say and say it well, just good writing. It has been refreshing, personal and real. Celebrity chefs? Take it to Insta, FB & TouTube. This isn’t the platform.
I know in time, like the other Social Media platforms, Substack will surely morph into something completely different from its original conception. It will become about money, profits, and whatever the VCs want. And this is how it starts.
There are so many great contributors that have been either intentionally or unintentionally left out (hard not to do..) that this seems to go against why many people join Substack in the first place.
My concern is that this model takes off for the few in the group and it makes it harder for the rest of the food-world contributors to keep their subscribers. Not everyone can afford to subscribe to a large number of Substacks so these consolidated celebrity groups will amass tons of subscribers and many newbies who don’t yet have a great number of paid followers won’t have a chance. The current media cycle will just continue. It’s quite disheartening.