The SAVEUR Blog Awards are here, and from a pool of tens of thousands of reader nominations we’ve selected 66 finalists in 11 categories. Now it’s your turn to vote for a winner. Cast your ballot here early and often; you can vote as many times as you like by September 12th. Today: meet the finalists for our Best New Voice category.
These blogs are new to the scene, and they’re telling gripping stories with recipes and perspectives from India, the Mediterranean, Haiti, and more.
Bon Vivantito
The Blog: Bon Vivantito is dedicated to educating readers about all things drink, including culture, history, and lifestyle. Through a balance of home bartending how-to’s and essentials like how to make a basil Mezcal margarita, to learning about where to get some of the best cocktails in America, the blog aims to give readers all the drinkspiration they need to embark on their own booze-filled journey.
The Blogger: Tyler Zielinski is a freelance lifestyle writer, blogger, and content creator with a passion for cocktails and spirits. After working in the bar industry for a couple years and learning about craft cocktails, spirits, and their history, his passion around the subject led him to make cocktails of his own at home and share them with others. His boozy articles have been featured in Maxim, Tasting Table, Chilled Magazine, Edible Magazine,and Thirsty Mag. He loves mixing cocktails for the “‘gram” and firmly believes in the two-drink-minimum “rule” because life is more fun that way.
Cahier No.1
The Blog: Apparently, Vanessa gets everything from her grandmother. The way she picks apart recipes, her painfully chapped lips, unwanted facial hair. Vanessa’s grandmother died before she got to know her. This is probably her biggest regret. But before she passed, in her typical badass way, she left Vanessa a gift: 400 of her recipes, written in French, neatly catalogued in seven numbered “cahiers” (notebooks). Overwhelmed for years, she is finally setting out to tackle them. Starting with the first one: Cahier No. 1. Vanessa hopes you’ll join her on this journey of reaching back to a loved one, a culture, she never got to know.
The Blogger: Vanessa is a 1.5 generation Haitian-American who loves to cook almost as much as she loves to eat. Food is how she pours love into her people. But last January, a quarter-life crisis finally pushed Vanessa to start pouring into herself. She’s on a journey to test, modernize, and share the 400 recipes her grandmother left her before she passed away. Trying them feels like something she is meant to do. Vanessa loves game nights, thoughtful gestures, and her hubby’s grumpy face. She’s lived in Miami, Senegal, and New Orleans, but is currently being held hostage in the northeast.
The Blog: Blogger Beatrix Basu’s family has always been on the move, so the inspiration for the recipes on Cooking for Elephants isn’t one particular culture, but spans from the Czech/German roots of her grandparents to the kitchen secrets of Beatrix’s Bengali mother-in-law. She searches for familiar flavors as much as she gets excited about new and unknown ways of eating. Some recipes are old and traditional, and others are her own take on traditions and ingredients. As much as she’s interested in good food, Beatrix is also interested in the stories and problems around food and food production.
The Blogger: Beatrix Basu grew up in a small Bavarian village and after many years of traveling, ended up living in India, together with her Bengali husband and their son. She studied photography and run a travel company. But cooking and food were always Beatrix’s biggest passions. Her husband is a professor for food engineering and his scientific approach often gives her a new perspective on food. Being one of two Germans in a small Indian town, she sometimes feel a bit out of place and blogging is an important way for her to connect to the world.
Kappa 23
The Blog: KAPPA 23 makes an effort to revive and adapt Mediterranean diet and way of living to modern reality. Being organic in their approach, and through quintessential recipes and food stories from their homeland, the bloggers focus on food that is meaningful and delicious. This, with the aim to inspire readers to cook seasonally from scratch, sourcing home-grown or local ingredients, and spending more time connecting with others around the dinner table.
The Bloggers: Ira and Emma met on the island of Crete while working as dietitians, and their common love for food brought them close. Just like you, they dream of ditching work to sip wine in the park and hot summer nights all year long. Their cooking reflects their Mediterranean roots and is distinctive for its creativity, without complicating the simple joy of eating.
Foods Before Dudes
The Blog: Foods Before Dudes is possibly the world’s first and only CGI food blog, filled not only with whimsical 3D illustrations, but recipes, stories, and of course, female empowerment. It aims to examine the intersection of food and art, showcase the creativity of women in the kitchen, and bend the rules of food blogging all together. This blog’s recipes are inspired by everything from old family recipes to the contents of the back of the refrigerator before a long-overdue trip to the grocery store. And dudes, don’t worry, you’re totally allowed and encouraged to read this blog too!
The Blogger: Kara is a writer, recipe developer, digital 3D modeler, and stay-at-home dog mom from Minnesota. She has been cooking and writing for as long as she can remember and after teaching herself 3D modeling just over two years ago, Kara came up with the idea to combine all of these hobbies into one by putting her own spin on food blogging. In her free time, she is most often found doing something food-related, whether it’s eating food with friends, watching Parts Unknown with her little dog Bucky, or cajoling loved ones into taste-testing some of her more questionable recipes.
Jun and Tonic
The Blog: Jun & Tonic is a blog that celebrates the joy of experimentation in the kitchen. Drawing inspiration from cultures and cuisines all around the world, the recipes on Jun & Tonic weaves little-known, under-appreciated Asian flavors and ingredients into familiar classics, resulting in weird but wonderful cross-cultural dishes like black garlic chocolate chip cookies, Milo-Nutella, and red bean panna cotta made to look like savory chawanmushi. With the firm belief that cooking should be fun and unbounded, the blog hopes to bring out that sense of child-like curiosity and culinary adventure in us all!
The Blogger: Yi Jun Loh, or Jun, is a food writer and cook from Malaysia. A chemical engineer by training, he immersed himself into the food industry right after graduating, learning to cook in London, Paris, and at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. He now resides in his multicultural motherland, where he writes about the big bold flavors of Malaysian cuisine for various publications, and shares his love for kooky food experiments through his blog Jun & Tonic.