Digest Magazine: Volume 4, Issue 1

Digest bills itself as a magazine for eaters and thinkers, asking how food shapes the way we live. It's certainly not written for people of lukewarm spirit. New York is the center of its universe, but there is some good food elsewhere.

Some issues have themes. This one seems to bounce from unusual subject to unusual subject, happily ignoring any connection other than food. For example:

• Rice cookers as tools of starving artists (but for an argument that ramen is the true fare of starving artists)
• Pronto pups, a Pacific Northwest take on corn dogs with a coating that some people call fluffy
• Passion fruit cake from Brazil
• A loquat cake, not from Brazil
• Spicy Indian food in Edison, New Jersey

Digest never takes itself too seriously. It’s always a little funky, more than a little fun, and nothing like what you find in other print publications.

Paperback. Color photographs throughout.