It's not about the celebrities. Striking art, good writing, and a deep dive into a single topic (ramen) make the publication shine. 

I didn't want to like Lucky Peach, which had its official launch party on Wednesday in San Francisco—and which, as the first issue's cover declares at the very top, is "the new food quarterly from Momofuku's David Chang." The publication screams branded. It's as if the only thing to do once you've opened five of Manhattan's most successful restaurants, done a couple of cameos on Treme, started selling dollar-an-ounce sauces at Williams-Sonoma, and managed to use variations on the word "fuck" 24 times when you're profiled in The New Yorker is to team up with McSweeney's to be "editor" of a magazine and related iPad app featuring a bunch of your food-world friends and, of course, your name. (Disclaimer: Even after three attempts at counting, that 24 figure is approximate.)

But here's the thing. Lucky Peach is good. It's so good that if I hadn't received a free press subscription, I would immediately pay the $28 annual rate to receive four issues of maybe the most original and best new food magazine that will debut this year.
I write this knowing that praising a publication so full of certified New York Food Celebrities is a bit like rooting for the Yankees. Food world titans Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl flank Chang in the table of contents, which also includes less buzzed-about but equally good (and in fact probably better) writers such as John T. Edge and Todd Kliman. If anything, the star power is a distraction. Bourdain's essay—which begins with the words "When examining the life, career, and culinary influences of David Chang"—is tough to get through, and a three-way dialogue in which Chang, Bourdain, and wd-50 chef Wylie Dufresne bluster on about food and mediocrity (really, it's called "Mediocrity: A Conversation") is redeemed primarily by the fact that their disembodied, speech-bubbled faces make the whole thing seem like a joke about talking heads. Reichl's "brand-by-brand instant ramen taste test" was a tease: It begins with the goddess of Good Living admitting that 10 years ago she used to serve her son and his friends ramen all the time—but then she adds that "before serving the soup, I always whipped in a few free-range eggs from our next-door neighbor's Araucana chickens. (The boys were entranced by their turquoise shells and marigold yolks.)" Her first "general conclusion" from the ramen tasting? "Throw out the packaged soup mix"—a tip for instant ramen that inhabits some sort of parallel-universe Planet of the Artisans.

And still there is much to love. Here are five highlights from issue one of Lucky Peach, which is devoted almost entirely to ramen (the real stuff, not Cup Noodles, although Cup Noodles make a shining appearance). 

-http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/2011s-best-new-food-magazine-david-changs-lucky-peach/240804/