Love Food? You'll Love Olive Magazine (BBC Olive Magazine)

Member Name: paulie1975

Product:	BBC Olive Magazine
Date:	04/07/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks Great, so many features, well written

Disadvantages: If you don't like food, don't buy it!

Olive Magazine is a monthly publication from the BBC. It is a magazine based entirely around food and drink.

The magazine is released on the 5th of each month, it costs £3.30 for each issue, although you can get a years subscription with £9.50 of Tesco Clubcard Vouchers, or can subscribe online for 6 issues at £1 for each issue.

The magazine is glossy and looks fantastic with excellent photographs of food and drink throughout, there are well over 250 pages and while many of these are adverts, all are relevant to people like myself who just love food and drink. The format is similar every month but the menus and contributions aren't which keeps it fresh.

There are regular contributions from leading chef's such as John Torode writing about making menu's from certain ingredients, Valentine Warner offering a selection of menu's for the more daring cook and the Gordon Ramsey Challenge where a member of the public attempts to cook a meal better than Ramsey.

The photography is wonderful and makes the food seem alluring and well created, it really does draw you in from whence you will then be lulled in by the easy sounding menus before realising they are a tad more complicated than you thought. But its the kind of magazine you can browse and just admire the pictures if your hungry.

There is an incredibly handy feature where it shows you how to feed four people for a week for under £35, this is really handy and I have only tried a few of the recipes being a developing cook rather than a good one but they have been excellent meals and really good value for money.

The magazine highlights areas to go for great food, so there may be a feature on Paris one month and one on Glasgow or the Lake District another, quite often there are handy little cookbooks which will explain how to make meals on a budget or give the 20 best menus the magazine had printed.

I discovered the magazine recently at a family members house and was entranced, I have since subscribed to 6 issues as an experiment but just know I will love it, it gives restaurant reviews, bright and glossy menu ideas. It has a wide selection of features on the best cooking apparatus, the newest and best cookery books and things like food festivals, farmers markets, cookery schools and classes and little places where you can buy exceptionally sourced products.

There are excellent features listing the best seasonal foods, good stuff about how to eat and cook healthily. There are monthly competitions, things such as gourmet v punter where a food critic and member of the public both review a restaurant and we see it from two perspectives and issues on budget restaurants and bars as well as wine and spirit reviews.

Overall if you love food, you will love this magazine. It is inspiring and if you try it at the value subscription it really is well worth a look, if you subscribe via the magazine you will also receive a free gift such as a cookery book or cooking aid.

It's a celebration of food and a real aid to anyone who is a good cook or wants to be, it looks fantastic, there are so many features that you will just keep coming back to it and if you keep them it is something you can refer back to forever, just find a big space in a cupboard or on a shelf!!

Summary: Love Food? You'll Love Olive Magazine