With three exciting food culture publications on the horizon—Toothsome, Cake Zine, and Guzzle—we caught up with the editors to get the inside scoop on the new issues and the scene shaping them. And who better to lead the conversation than our friend (honestly, everyone’s friend), Chris O’Leary of FatBoy Zine.
Chris: Cake, Your call out for a Steak Zine was such a great idea. What made you decide it was time to release a project outside of pastry but still rooted in your core purpose as Cake Zine?
Cake: We love pastry, but after seven thematic issues exploring cake, cookies, pie, bread, and fruit, we wanted to switch things up for our editorial team. Besides the slant rhyme with cake, steak felt like an obvious choice because it’s similarly fetishized, politicized, and generally fixated upon—especially in this moment of proteinmaxxing, MAHA, status dining, and the climate crisis.
Since it’s a savory offshoot, we made Steak Zine as a one-off special issue, presented in a different size and layout. But the content itself is still classic Cake Zine: exploring contemporary food culture in unexpected contexts. We’re very proud of it and excited to hear what our readers think as we continue to expand our editorial scope.
Chris: Food has an important part to play in talking about politics, socio-economic imbalance and community. Have you seen this become more important to your practice over the last few years?
Toothsome: Food is a lens that allows us to examine the realities around us and highlights the differing realities we all face. Through food we can trace history, transfer memories and look within; at the same time, food is weaponised and used to widen the chasm of inequality. If we examine food culture, we must give voice to all stories.
Cake: Exploring the intersections between food, politics, class, and community has been core to Cake Zine since our very first issues in 2022: Sexy Cake and Wicked Cake, which respectively used cake as a lens to unpack concepts like sexuality, gender roles, colonialism, diet culture, and the demonization of pleasure. We always aim to choose themes that will provoke critical thinking. These conversations have been an essential ingredient in each Cake Zine issue as we’ve shifted through the pastry case, whether we’re analyzing the linguistic roots of the political slogan “bread and roses” in Daily Bread or profiling an undocumented Barcelona frutería worker in Forbidden Fruit.
Steak obviously has incredibly rich political and socio-economic connotations, so expect lots of this (plus the totally unexpected) in Steak Zine.
Guzzle: I’ve been thinking a lot about the social side of the publication. Dublin, where I studied and worked for a decade, is being squeezed by the pressures of its own success. The tourism board is prioritising visitors over locals, cultural spaces are being replaced with hotels, and tax reductions for multinationals are making housing increasingly inaccessible. Similar to the UK, Ireland introduced tenancy laws in March, and evictions rose by 35%, as landlords reconsidered their options ahead of the new tenancy protections. Homelessness has also reached record levels. This changing landscape is part of the reason I left two years ago.
The first issue was influenced by pandemic-era eating trends, while the second drew inspiration from love during a time of global disconnect. Issue three is Guzzle's response to this moment, using food to communicate the warm and fuzzy feelings of home, along with the precarities of place. Ireland has one of the largest diasporas in the world, with people finding a sense of home in Irish pubs worldwide, which Eoghan Conway touches upon in The Global Local. Aoife and Eve have looked at the commercialisation of Dublin through a hilarious recipe in Disaster Soup, Eimear Arthur talks about the pressures of saving for a home after stints renting in New York, London, and Dublin, while writers like Kevin Sheridan and Jasmin Jelley push the theme further, exploring the cultures that produce our cheese and the bacteria that calls our guts home.
I see Guzzle as a way to have fun with topics, but I also feel a responsibility to platform the realities behind our themes. This issue feels particularly pertinent given the complexities of home worldwide.
Chris: We've seen a rise in chefs, pastry chefs and food personalities expanding their skills to writing. It's been an exciting time for new voices in food writing. Do you think this will continue and has it led to exciting submissions to your projects?
Cake: We’re always excited by the opportunity to publish non-traditional writers who can draw from their experiences. Our new issue includes work by a former butcher and a lab tech working on plant-based meat alternatives—plus pieces from other emerging and established writers.
It’s great (and long-overdue) to see food culture expand with fresh voices and into new outlets, and we hope this current wave of food writing will find space to develop and flourish beyond social media or Substack. These platforms are powerful, but they also breed a sense of immediacy that leaves little time for editing or deeper editorial conversations around context and framing. We need to invest in quality writing around food in the same way we do with any other topic, while also ensuring it’s not just people with existing audiences who are being given an additional platform.
Chris: Guzzle, you're doing three launches ya crazy things! How important is it to you to host launches in varying cities? I imagine it makes it more accessible for your audience instead of a london-centric launch.
Guzzle: Guzzle has always been about that tactile experience. I initially dreamt up the idea while studying gastronomy and working as an event manager, and I was so tired of consuming culture behind a screen (2021 vibes). IRL events are an essential part of Guzzle’s offering.
The publication is very rooted in contemporary food culture and life in Ireland, so I always knew Dublin would be a focal point for the launch, but Belfast was a happy accident. I love the city, and with contributors like Jacky Sheridan, Phil McCrilly, and Laura Callaghan based there, it felt natural to celebrate their input.
There’s talk of a Copenhagen event in the pipeline too… watch this space!
Chris: Toothsome, you've also been so busy, expanding into events and more. Was this always the plan when you started the mag? Or did it happen naturally?
Toothsome: The crux of the magazine is how food shapes experience, whether that's through design or culture. For us, experience is rooted in something tangible like dining in buzzy environments, hosting friends at home, or even a quiet solo meal. Events are a natural extension of publishing these days and with biannual print, gatherings form a part of our editorial output.
Chris: What's one food trend you've loved to see and one you want to leave behind in 2026?
Cake: More: Bread baskets. Less: Burrata.
Toothsome: Love that we're drinking broth for breakfast. We're all Chinese now apparently.
Let's leave proteinmaxxing behind please.
Guzzle: Coincidentally, I’ve loved seeing brands invest in print. Gail’s, The Salad Project, and even Waitrose have clearly taken note of the rise of indie food mags like Guzzle, Fat Boy Zine, Toothsome, and Cake, and have invested heavily in this medium to engage customers. I’m tired of seeing brands pollute social media, and I genuinely enjoy reading branded magazines, so it feels like a positive step.
One trend I’m a little torn about is the rise in Irish food culture in London, with spice bags and pints of Guinness appearing across pubs and restaurants (especially around Paddy’s Day). While I’m thrilled that more people are taking an interest in Ireland, I’d love to see real Irish food being celebrated.
We have incredible seafood, with restaurants across London serving our oysters. Irish spirits like Teeling, Dingle, Glendalough, and Valentia Island vermouth are thriving, and don’t get me started on our cheese. There’s a bigger story to be told: Irish food is so much more than a few fusion dishes.
Chris: Joke question: You're setup on a blind date/hangout with someone by a friend. What restaurant do you want it to be, and whose waiting for you at the table? It can be anyone.
Toothsome: The forthcoming Korean-American restaurant Oyatte in NY with Karen O. I met her briefly about a decade ago after a show and she was extremely warm to me, even though I was likely a bit too lubricated which made me overly emotional. They say to never meet your heroes, but I'm glad I did and I'd love to sit down with her properly one day.
I visited the David Mellor factory recently and had a sneak peek at the custom cutlery they were making for Oyatte (beautiful, btw) and I'm a huge fan of the Korean Netflix reality cooking show Culinary Class Wars where the chef Ha Sung Lee appears as a contestant. He knows his chops (no spoilers!).
Guzzle: It has to be Café Deco because I’ve heard so many great things about it, but haven’t had a chance to visit yet. I’m not big on celebrity culture, but I’ve definitely fallen for Jonathan Anderson and Jessie Buckley’s hype. Jessie was brilliant in Fargo, and I don’t hear enough about it. I imagine she’d also be good craic. Maybe it would create the basis of an upcoming Guzzle essay.
Cake: It’s at Bistrot Paul Bert restaurant in Paris, where our art director Noah Emrich is based. We walk into the room and there’s a fourth seat at our table occupied by…Zendaya. She wants to invest in indie food media.