Steak Zine #1
88 x 164 mm, 204 pages
New York, US
First published in 2026
Co-founders & editors: Aliza Abarbanel and Tanya Bush
Art director & design: Noah Emrich
‘Exploring art, history, and pop culture through food’
Cake Zine, the little literary magazine covering art, history and pop culture through food looks away from dessert for an issue, with a special ‘Steak’ themed issue delving into the cultural impact of red meat through a series of features, personal accounts, short stories and investigations.
As they assert in their editorial, the team are tucking into a timely topic in a dystopian culinary zeitgeist fuelled by: ‘Status dining, appetite suppressing drugs, meatfluencers, protein-maxxing, and the climate crisis.’
Grabbing all of this cultural context by the horns, readers can expect features ranging from an anonymous investigation detailing the indulgent carnivorous research behind a plant-based food start up, to an account of the unique bliss reserved for stoned steak dinner dates in low lit suburban steak houses. Elsewhere, delve into stories covering the likes of rampant supermarket steak heists, a retrospective look at meat glue, and the trauma of growing up on an Australian cattle ranch—all this and more, packed into this lean, blood red edition.
On the Journal
At Work With Aliza Abarbanel: ‘Our first joint project was a mutual aid bake sale fighting food insecurity in NYC that drew from our shared communities—and while we were setting it up, Tanya began pitching me on the idea of an interdisciplinary food magazine that focused on dessert through fiction, essays, poetry, recipes, and more.’
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