David Lane studied Communication Design at Central Saint Martins when it was still in the old Holborn building. He worked for design agencies, made exhibitions for the Science Museum and record covers for Ninja Tune, and ran his own studio. Marina Tweed came from hospitality and events, having worked for big restaurant groups before becoming a project manager at Construct London. They were a couple who ate out constantly, went to supper clubs, and talked about food the way other people talked about football. One evening in 2011, they hosted a dinner at their London flat, invited friends, and pitched the idea of a food magazine. Most of the people present at that dinner contributed to the first issue.
The premise was audacious in its simplicity: everybody in the world eats, yet there was no independent magazine that explored food through the lens of art, film, music, and culture rather than through recipes and restaurant reviews. Lane and Tweed printed roughly 2,000 copies of the first issue — the number, Lane later said, that always seemed to make the most economic sense per unit when he was designing books. They did not expect to make money. They did not lose any, which surprised them. The response from people who knew what they were talking about was immediate.
The Gourmand grew into a biannual 120-page journal printed on high-quality papers by specialist art book printers, featuring specially commissioned writing, photography, and illustration. A feature on lexical-gustatory synaesthesia — people who can taste words — sat beside a profile of Buck's of Woodside, the unassuming Silicon Valley diner where half of the tech industry's biggest deals were sealed over pancakes. Contributors included Ruth Reichl, Ghetto Gastro, and Dorothy Iannone. The magazine's final cover recreated every food emoji in real life. D&AD recognised the publication; Lane, meanwhile, became creative director of Frieze from 2016 to 2021 and began a long collaboration with Hermès.
The last magazine appeared in 2019. Covid, family, and a natural creative evolution led Lane and Tweed to transition The Gourmand into a book series — The Egg, The Lemon, The Mushroom — each volume splitting a single ingredient into factual stories spanning art, science, literature, and film. The magazine's run was short — thirteen issues — but it proved that food publishing could be as intellectually ambitious, as visually rigorous, and as creatively free as anything in the art world. That dinner party in 2011 turned out to be one of the most consequential meals in British independent publishing.
Explore The Gourmand at <a href="https://thegourmand.co.uk/" target="\_blank">thegourmand.co.uk