![]() ![]() Everyone else was packing up, but I was obliged to go back to promoting the cookbook. It took a while for the enormity to sink in: the next day I left for Kansas City. I took the first plane out and was at 4 Times Square the following morning, standing with my staff, when we learnt that Gourmet was history. "We need you in the office" was all he would say. On one very bleak day, Ruth Reichl cooked chocolate cake, "the cake that cures everything" but her year of grief after the closure of Gourmet led to her rediscovering the pleasure of all kinds of cooking. ![]() "You have to come back to New York." I was in a restaurant being interviewed by a reporter, and I stepped outside to take the call. I was, in fact, in Seattle promoting our just-published doorstop of a cookbook when I received an ominous call from my boss, Tom Wallace. My response to the challenge of publishing in a recession was to do what the industry calls "expanding the brand" by 2009 we had two shows on American public television and a string of books. Gourmet was a 69-year-old institution many people had lifetime subscriptions. But despite the recession it never crossed my mind that Condé Nast might close the magazine. Advertising revenues were falling throughout the magazine industry, and we were no exception. ![]() In the autumn of 2009, I'd been the editor in chief of Gourmet for 10 years. ![]()
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