Vijay Sapre had already lived several lives — taxi driver, waiter, music producer, advertising copywriter — before co-founding the online car marketplace mobile.de in 1996 and selling it to eBay for a sum that made further employment unnecessary. What he did next surprised everyone: he considered starting a cooking apprenticeship at forty, completed a placement with Michelin-starred chef Gutbert Fallert in the Black Forest, and in 2008 launched Effilee — a quarterly print magazine devoted to culinary culture, published from Hamburg against every prevailing trend in digital media.
The name, French for to sharpen or to hone, captures the magazine's editorial philosophy precisely. Effilee occupies the space between the elitist Der Feinschmecker and the recipe-driven supermarket titles, treating cooking as a cultural practice worthy of the same serious, beautifully produced journalism you'd expect from a literary review. The writing is long, the photography is lavish, and the subjects range from three-star restaurants and artisan producers to the cultural history of the döner kebab. Contributors like food stylist and author Stevan Paul, who has been writing for the magazine since its second issue, describe it as the most comprehensive publication on culinary culture and pleasure in the German-speaking world.
That the publisher behind the magazine is technically the Vijay Sapre Vermögensverwaltung GmbH — a wealth management company — is perhaps the most telling detail. Karen and Vijay Sapre make Effilee because they can, because they love it, and because they believe the ancient human practice of sharing food deserves writing as good as the meal itself.
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