Read This Now, or Almost Now: Lucky Peach Issue 4

It is now time for your regular Lucky Peach update. Because we love David Chang as much as you do, perhaps even more so after his recent pit stop at UCLA. (Dinner afterwards? At A-Frame with Jonathan Gold, Peter Meehan and Amy Rowat, if you keep track of these kinds of things.)

Because the next issue, the magazine's fourth, covers American food, conveniently in time for the upcoming July Fourth holiday. (Well, not really, since the issue hits the stands on July 13, but close enough. You'll still be thinking about patriotic stuff and grilling meat, won't you?) And because this issue features both Jonathan Gold (late of this publication, currently of the Los Angeles Times; we love him anyway) and Robert Sietsema (of the Village Voice) talking about “American cuisine” over Kansas City barbecue.

For the uninitiated, Lucky Peach is a quarterly journal of food and writing and the occasional cheffy silliness, published by McSweeney's and created by Momofuku chef-owner David Chang and writer Peter Meehan.

What else is in the next issue? David Simon (creator of The Wire and Treme, for which Anthony Bourdain sometimes writes and upon which David Chang has appeared) remembers his father “via pickles and cream.” There's an illustrated look into American sushi. A “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style hunt for tacos through California and Texas. And recipes from Wylie Dufresne, Jonathan Benno and Marco Canora. (Monkfish tripe! Seaweed burgers! Homemade mortadella!) Just the sorts of things you'll want to whip up this summer, between barbecues, Dodger games and election fun over at CNN.

There's some other stuff, too — Marc Maron on cast-iron pans; Bourdain and Elvis Mitchell talk about movies — but you probably should go read about it yourself. If you want to get caught up on the previous three issues, now might be a good time.

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