With its new Sunday section, The Sacramento Bee places a huge bet on the city’s appetite for food news.
It’s called Feast, and its tagline reads “Dine. Drink. Discuss.” It intends to cover food and beverage culture in all its forms, with profiles, trend pieces, news, reviews and so forth.
The first section runs 24 pages long, and if you can’t wait until Sunday…
- – It looks like each Feast will start out with a Q&A. This week, it’s with a Slow Food USA governor.
- – Then there’s Food & Wine reporter Chris Macias’ new column, The Nosh Pit. Ironically, the first one is still about wine.
- – Next comes a pretty extensive calendar of food-related events—much longer than the Wednesday Potluck section.
- – Some sponsored content.
- – Reader-submitted food porn.
- – A restaurant review of Aji Japanese Bistro, the fairly hyped-about, casual upscale restaurant in El Dorado Hills. In the middle of the Feast buzz this week, the blog world has taken to commenting on Capital Public Radio’s (and freelance writer for SN&R) Rick Kushman on-air interview with Macias and Features Editor Tim Swanson. Kushman accused The Bee’s restaurant critic Blair Anthony Robertson of being mean. Anyway, this review is definitely critical but there’s no mean-spirited joke in sight.
- – On to the cover feature! This one is about a family of prized cooks.
- – A totally new section is next: Consume. My mind immediately jumped to a teen fashion magazine’s page where they tell you to buy a ton of stuff. It’s like that. But food stuff.
- – James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Elaine Corn has a new column, in which she explores the region’s ethnic specialty stores.
- – And finally, a food-related travel wire story. This week’s rendition discusses Portland’s bustling food cart scene.
There was one recipe attached to Corn’s column. But in general, recipes and kitchen tips will be in Wednesday’s newspaper.
