Gourmet, R.I.P.

Gourmet magazine, dead at age 68. Survived by sibling Bon Appetit.

The nation's oldest food magazine will put out its final issue in November.

Its publisher, Conde Nast, is also folding two bridal magazines and a parenting magazine called Cookie. The demise of the publications is a result of the dramatic decline in advertising pages.

Conde Nast CEO Charles Townsend said, in a memo to staff, that the closures were requested "to navigate the company through the economic downtourn and to position us to take advantage of coming opportunities," as reported in Associated Press. Gourmet recipes will continue to be online at Epicurious.com and Conde Nast will continue with Gourmet's book publishing and television programming.

As of 5:30 p.m. Monday, there was no mention of the demise on the Gourmet web page.

In a 2004 Taste story about our favorite food magazines, here's what we wrote about Gourmet:

By the late '90s, the name synonymous with foodie glossies was looking a little dowdy.

Take this month's issue, which shifts from a sharp look at the raw food movement and a 2004 preview (which, among other items, selects butter lettuce as a veggie-to-look-out-for) to a kids'-party guide that made me seriously - albeit momentarily - consider adoption. Gourmet hits the road like no other magazine, and when an entire issue is devoted to a single delicious city - Paris, Rome, San Francisco - it becomes a gourmand's travelogue that leaves all other guides in the dust.

Reichl lures high-profile scribes (John Guare, Ann Beattie, Frank McCourt) into her pages, the photos make your stomach rumble and the aspirational recipes never fail; even the ads are first-rate. All this for the unparalleled subscriber's bargain of $1.25 an issue. If Gourmet were a dinner-party guest, you'd want to have it seated right next to you. Which, I imagine, is how you'd feel about Reichl too.)