Behold the Cover for Lucky Peach’s Final Issue

It’s the end of an era: Quarterly magazine and food world darling Lucky Peach has unveiled the cover for its 23rd and final issue, slated to hit newsstands on May 30. This time around, the theme is: the suburbs.

News broke in mid-March that the magazine was folding and had laid off its staff, sending shockwaves through the restaurant and food media worlds and eliciting wistful eulogies from chefs, restaurateurs, and writers alike. The publication, which published its debut issue in Summer 2011, has taken a characteristically cheeky approach to its own demise, announcing its closure in a blog post written in the style of parents telling their children about a impending divorce; last week at its annual James Beard Awards afterparty, it memorialized itself by displaying a full-size coffin filled with back issues.

Today also marks the remaining staff’s final day in their New York City office, so everyone please send them pies, boxes of Popeyes fried chicken, and/or hot dog bouquets.

While the Suburbs issue represents the last batch of new content from LP, there’s still one more physical issue to come: A “best of” double issue will be published in the fall.

The void left by six-year-old Lucky Peach folding certainly won’t go unnoticed — where else will you be able to find photos of pantyhose stuffed with hot dogs? — but as Eater’s executive editor Helen Rosner recently pointed out, the real legacy of LP is how it looked: The magazine broke the mold with its irreverent art and design, and its influence can be spotted throughout the pages of seemingly every other food mag being published today.

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