Swill, Issue 5

About Swill:

Swill is a gloriously large-format new magazine about eating, drinking and bar and restaurant culture (and the bright and kooky people behind them and in them). It's also published by a foodie company behind a group of restaurants in Sydney.

In this issue:

What would you do if you were hit by an earthquake in the middle of the night in Oaxaca? If you’re Mexico-based photographer Andrew Reiner, you roll over and go back to sleep. In keeping with the photojournalist’s gift for adaptability, he spent a week in the southern Mexico mountain town, doing midnight beer runs for agave farmers and recording what he ate around the markets that keep the city ticking. He also shot the only Egyptian pitmaster in Texas, with the greatest moustache to grace the pages of a magazine since 1976. 

The more issues of Swill we publish, the more we learn. So much of putting together a publication like this is about trust, time and going ever-so-slightly limp. Less whiskey throttle, more velvet glove, as they say. Perhaps the best example of that is photographer John Laurie’s sweeping, magical look at the coast of Wales which we’ve had cooking for nearly six months. It’s a bit of a Britfest this issue, actually, between Molly Pepper Steemson’s essay on the posh lives of BBC darlings The Two Fat Ladies and my interview with Mighty Boosh actor and photographer Dave Brown, who plays everybody’s favourite shaman familiar, Bollo.