Chris O’Leary, Fatboy Zine
There are a lot of food mags out there, but few as charming as Fatboy Zine, a London mag celebrating Asian food and food culture. The new, fifth issue is its best issue to date, focusing on Taiwan.
London-based art director Chris O’Leary is its founder, and he tells us about more his magazine as he shares his inspirations and his working week.
What are you doing this morning?
I’ve always been a morning person, post 4pm I’m totally useless. So my mornings always follow a nice routine. I wake up at 6:30am, enjoy a coffee with my partner and our cat Cora, then go for a run around Hackney Marshes. Which on a summer morning is beautiful, calm and empty. Once I’m back home I make one of my favourite breakfasts, sliced tomatoes on thick toast with salt, it might seem super boring, but I love it.
Describe your work environment
I’m lucky that I get to work from home. My day job is in music, which is a lot of fun, but I’m more productive at home. We live on a quiet street near a park and a lot of shops in East London. We’ve lived here for a while now, so I’ve gotten to know the shop owners, I enjoy wandering around and catching up with them. My partner always laughs that when we walk around I wave at everyone.
In our flat I have a small desk next to a large window overlooking a lot of greenery. We have a large bookcase filled with magazines, comic books and cookbooks we’ve collected over the years. It’s far too big but we hardly ever throw anything away.
I like to keep small boxes and files around me of things I’ve collected, receipts, paper textures and notes. So my desk is always a bit of a mess.
Which magazine do you first remember?
Gosh, the first magazine I remember feeling kind of enamoured by was my friends Kerrang!. I’d never bought one before, but it was so loud and in your face. I used to borrow it after he was done with it. I think I appreciated the look of it, the photos of all these weird bands, and even the eye-roll people would give you when they saw you reading it. It felt like a statement to carry around.
Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine?
This is sooo tricky, but if I have to pick one, I really like Brick. I think it’s always been an inspiring mix of good writing and incredible visuals.
Describe Fatboy Zine in three words
Delicious, loud, thoughtful
The new issue is about Taiwan. Did you get to visit the region?
We did, we travelled there earlier this year (2024) for the magazine. I was so excited, I’d read so much, but had no idea how it would feel to be there. It was every bit as welcoming, vibrant and tasty as I hoped. We stayed in an area called Da’an park in Taipei, but the transport there is so good you could walk or get anywhere quite quickly.
We’d been speaking to a few amazing people on Instagram well before we decided to do the issue. But as we developed the theme, we want to meet them in person (Slow Chen and Frank Huang especially) We organised a day we could spend together, meet them and talk about their work and our theme. We audio recorded everything and just spoke casually for ages.
I also booked a cooking class with the talented Ivy Chen, we spent a morning walking around the wet markets before cooking dishes together. I didn’t expect to interview her but we had such good conversations I asked if she’d be willing to answer some questions and she said yes.
I highly recommend people travelling around Taiwan. It’s ridiculous how beautiful it is.
What does a country’s food culture tell us about that country?
Ohhh good question! I believe at its most raw level, it can show you how people treat eachother, like Yum Cha (dim sum) in Hong Kong or Kamayan in the Philippines, they’re both so communal based, which I find in the people of both countries.
More than that you can learn from ingredients a places history and community structures. For example, I didn’t realise that beef isn’t eaten as much in Taiwan historically because of the association with cows being important farm animals, and they play a role in sustaining a family or community. Or in Marseille there’s less pork served by restaurants because of the large Islamic communities there.
The more you learn about a country’s food, past or present; the more you can learn its behaviours, ideals and history.
How has the zine developed issue to issue?
It’s definitely grown bigger with each issue, and our themes have become (in my opinion) more confident, less reliant on traditional narratives of a place. That’s a natural progression from inviting people I admire to take part, the more they include their voice, the more dimensions on a theme we get to share.
We’ve jumped a lot from our 24 (I think?!) page first issue to our 64 page zine now. I think more and more my role is to find the right theme, and make space for the right people to explore.
Highlight one story from the latest issue that sums up the magazine and its mission
I love all the stories, but one interesting one in particular was our interview with Slow Chen, a food designer in Taipei, something she said stood out.
We talked about the term ‘food design’, what it means and how is it used. She made the point that, unlike chefs or cooks, food design is all about the concept behind the action that creates food. And that she still produces food, just in a way that is focussed more on experience, so food doesn’t have to be delicious, you can make an audience experience extremes of flavour to prove a point or ask a question. And that kind of thinking really summed up Taiwan for me, conceptual but full of intention, and new.
What advice do you have for anyone planning to launch a magazine?
Spend most of your time thinking about your theme, writing and overall ideals, and much less time on design. Which is crazy as a designer myself! But I keep buying magazines that feel like they have something beautiful to say with conviction.
What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
I’m going to try a few food spots in London I haven’t been to yet, so I’m very excited about that.