Exactly nine years ago, I sat in Park Slope writing the editor’s letter to the first Edible Brooklyn. Thirty-three issues later, I’m typing my last. I’m heartbroken to be stepping down as editor of this magazine, but very happy to be staying on across the East River as editor of Edible Manhattan. I trust this magazine’s next editor will raise both the bar and the roof, and I very much look forward to reading its pages and posts for years to come.
But first, a look back.
In the almost-decade since we launched Edible Brooklyn, I’ve had the pleasure of editing tales of Red Hook pupusas and Brighton Beach borscht. Of basement wine and craft cocktails. Of rooftop bees and Ramadan, old-school egg creams and salsa start-ups, the hard cider renaissance and the craft coffee revolution. We’ve examined fermentation fever, sidewalk foraging, the butchery boom, Persian New Year, DIY distilling, underground restaurants, school gardens and the melting pot lunch at a Prospect Heights school with students from over 50 countries. We won a James Beard Award for our features on Franny’s, Egg and Roberta’s. And in every issue, we met people pursuing meaningful relationships with the world through backyard chickens, fig saplings and DIY vinegar. There’s been lots and lots of small-batch, locavore whiskey.
And now I present my final issue, a collection of ideas that also look forward and back, straddling tradition and invention.
A protein bar made of crickets. An under-ground sourdough club. A reimagined riff on the CSA. A high-tech start-up connecting fishers and chefs, without the warehouse. A school where anyone can teach anyone anything. And a groundbreaking Swedish chef in Williamsburg creating dishes I never could have imagined when I stood, a stone’s throw away, at our launch party in 2005.
That night I took the stage at the Brooklyn Brewery and raised my plastic cup of stout not to the farmers, fishers, brewers and bagel-boilers who had already made our borough the most delicious place on Earth. Rather I toasted you, the enlightened eaters whose support, financial and spiritual, is responsible for the revolution. Little did I know how it would grow.
With gratitude,
Gabrielle Langholtz
Photo Credit: Vicky Wasik
