Hi Dante. Digest is full of great, no-nonsense, unpretentious food writing. How did the burning desire to start a quarterly food magazine begin?

Dante: It was either late at night or early in the morning. We stopped at the I-84 Diner, which is named for the interstate. The I-84 Diner serves just about everything from fried clam strips to spanakopita. And like BBQs and soft-serve-french-fry joints, a round-the-clock diner is the true connector of American cuisine. You can find all three, packed to the gills on a Saturday night in the summertime from sea to shining sea.

The industry leaders in the food writing biz (Bon Appetit, Saveur, Food & Wine) publish a lot of aspirational food writing. Their subscribers read articles for the life they wished they had. Bopping around Chilean vineyards, hunting truffles in the Piedmontese woods, or baking the perfect French meringue in a marble-topped kitchen.

So right there in the I-84 Diner, one of our founders, Alexander Finkelstien, came up with Digest: a magazine devoted to egalitarian eating. Our pages are filled with tales about food that connect us, by authors from unexpected places.

We love how you have an homage to a massive restaurant chain next to a piece about the joy of foraging for berries. What makes a story worthy of an issue of Digest?

Dante: The story itself has to have a glaze of tone, a dollop of soul, and a healthy sprinkle of joy.

But where the story comes from is just as important. We try to focus on publishing work by authors from unexpected places. We publish stories from people who have a fraught relationship to food. People with food disabilities, disordered eating and body dysmorphia. Out of our peers and contemporaries, we publish the most authors over the age of 60. And most of all, we love publishing first-time authors, who would have never thought to put into writing how they love the food they love.

You're in the US. Whereabouts are you based and what's your setup? In the office, at the kitchen table, Zoom meets across the globe?

Dante: There are four main editors and founders, and, like the Ninja Turtles, we all have our specialties. Lucca is our inventory and production guy. Lucca is semi-nomadic and lives out of his 2008 Volkswagen Golf that doesn't have a muffler. Wherever Lucca goes, Digest goes with, and you can hear it coming from a mile away.

What are your plans for future issues? What about a UK themed one?

Dante: We would love to grow the business to a point where we could pay our contributors equitably, at market price, for their work.

A UK themed Digest? I've hit up about a dozen or so UK food-people and none of them have yet to submit an article. So, if anyone in Ol' Blighty is reading this: give us your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to write about mushy peas and scrumpy.

What indie magazines are on your coffee table?

Dante: Right now I have the 9th issue of Nick Muncy's Toothache and Fifty Grande's Food Issue.

Final question we ask everyone. In this day and age, why make a print magazine?

Dante: The kinds of people who still love the look and feel of an indie print magazine are our kinda people. In a grubby capitalist world, it feels real nice to make good things for good people.