The First Issue

The first issue of Salt Paper was forty pages, saddle-stitched, and printed on paper the founders could barely afford. Its editorial promise fit in a single line: food worth thinking about, at a pace worth reading.

There was no news cycle to chase, only a table to set. The recipes shared space with essays on growers, on kitchen tools, on the economics of a good lunch. Readers wrote in asking whether it was a cookbook or a magazine. The answer, then as now, was both and neither.

This spring we return to those forty pages for a long look at where the magazine started — and why the questions it asked in issue one are still the ones we ask today.