Taking Food Further
Publisher of magazine for professional chefs makes a home in Harbor Country
Susan Szymanski has two loves: food and fabric. She holds a degree in textile marketing and engineering and an enviable collection of vintage table linens, but it’s food that’s the focus of her professional life.
Szymanski is the vice president and publisher of Chicago-based Plate Magazine, a glossy publication and online community “for chefs and people who want to cook like chefs.” Owned by MTG Media Group, which Szymanski joined in 2017, Plate is known for its sophisticated look, gorgeous food photography and knack for predicting food trends.
“Our motto is ‘Take food further,’” said Szymanski of the magazine, which is published six times per year. “We’re always reporting ahead of what’s happening.” At a recent conference, for example, trend forecasters predicted Jewish food would be all the rage in 2020. “I looked at a colleague and said, ‘Hmm, we covered that in 2018.’ We tend to be ahead of the curve.” Recent issues of Plate have featured modern steakhouses, chefs to watch, alternative flours, and food and wine pairings.
While Szymanski spends the workweek in Chicago brainstorming everything from brand strategy to digital marketing tactics, she downshifts on the weekend, cooking and hosting in her American Foursquare home in Lakeside, MI.
When in Lakeside, Szymanski typically opts to cook rather than dine out, but she does have several favorite local haunts.
“Often if I’m driving in on a Friday, as soon as I cross the border into Michigan I call the Whistle Stop and order their classic BLT with avocado,” Szymanski said. “And I’ll sometimes pick up a few of their wonderful biscuits.” For brunch she favors the slow steak bowl at Houndstooth or a sandwich from the Mason Jar Café, both in Benton Harbor. For dinner she enjoys the seasonal Taste of Granor dinners at Granor Farms in Three Oaks.
Szymanski is an avid cookbook collector, and her Lakeside and Chicago kitchens feature shelves lined with culinary titles. She favors anything by former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl and classics such as the Silver Palate Cookbook. She also has compiled a cookbook of her own recipes that includes her signature chipotle cherry barbecue sauce and her mother’s recipe for pierogi.
“My mother was an amazing cook,” said Szymanski, who grew up in New Jersey on a property with 26 apple trees and three pear trees. “She could turn an apple into anything.”
Given these roots, it’s no surprise that Szymanski, who took a class at the French Pastry School in Chicago, enjoys baking with seasonal fruits, from apple tarte tatin to her mother’s strawberry pie.
A tech-savvy leader with extensive knowledge of sales and marketing, Szymanski has a long and impressive resume in food service publishing. She spent 14 years at Nation’s Restaurant News, which highlights restaurant industry news and data on menu, marketing, operations and finance trends for food service professionals. Before taking the helm at Plate, she was the first vice president of marketing at SPINS, a marketing company that tracks the growth of natural and organic products.
Even when she’s not on the job, Szymanski continues to contribute to and explore the worlds of food and fabric. She belongs to the Chicago chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, a national group of women dedicated to promoting the education of women in food, and she’s an expert at procuring vintage textiles at auctions and local shops.
“I have found some really great napkins at Elephant’s Breath Antiques (St. Joseph, MI),” Szymanski said, adding that she also enjoys the more contemporary finds at Stockholm Objects in Harbert, MI.
It’s clear that for this energetic, accomplished executive, her Harbor Country home provides a relaxing place to focus on simple, wonderful things.
“It’s the peacefulness and the quiet and the slowness, the weather, the lake, the bike riding, the morning dog walk, the walking on the beach,” Szymanski says. In other words, you could say the fabric of lake life provides food for the soul.
