Home cooks, rejoice! For 20 years, Epicurious has cultivated a special relationship with its readers who know, love, and trust the brand. Vegans, vegetarians, diabetics, omnivores, carnivores, pollotarians, pescetarians, flexitarians, emotional eaters and cheese-lovers alike have grown to love the online recipe database that suits the likes of all diets—they’ve actually become BFFs.
The brand’s relaunch delivers a new interface specifically designed for digital natives (i.e. us). Epicurious has stripped its appearance, including the logo, and redesigned the website with one purpose in mind: to create a new user-friendly navigation.
“It’s like we did a major gut kitchen renovation, only with a few million lines of code.” – Eric Gillin, Executive Director at Epicurious.
Three words to describe the relaunch: chic, innovative, and practical.
Why is this so important? Well, here’s the deal: Epicurious is more than just your average food website. In addition to 400,000 recipes—30,000 of which are tried-and-true recipes from leading food journalism brands, cookbook authors, and celebrity chefs—Epicurious offers readers expert tips and tricks for all cooks ranging from first-timers to sous-chefs. If you’re a kitchen rookie, read this: “57 Things You Can Do to Be a Better Cook Right Now.”
The website will also repurpose additional recipes through new partnerships with Food 52, Weelicious, and the cookbook publisher HarperCollins. With over 272 results for “pancakes,” you just can’t go wrong with Epicurious.
Luckily for you, sifting through thousands of recipes has become even easier—here’s how:
The search bar is strategically placed smack dab in the middle of the homepage in front of a very pretty picture: here’s your Google for all things yummy. Bonus: it also offers autocomplete and trending searches.
- Underneath the search bar, a gray button says “or get inspired!” Offering recipes at random, it functions as Epi‘s very own StumbleUpon.
- “Cook It” is another addition that recommends recipes based on your personal preferences.
- Last but not least, Epi and The Weather Channel have created the feature “Food Forecast,” which tells you what to cook depending on the situation outside your window—’Cuse, looks like our recommendation will always inevitably be soup like “Autumn Minestrone” or “Clam and Corn Chowder.”
As you can tell, Epicurious has quite literally mastered the art of being digital-savvy. The relaunch also includes new designs for the brand’s ground-breaking application on mobile and tablet devices, as well as Windows and iOS devices. Its newest feature is the seasonal ingredient finder.
An extra cool observation: the image featured on the homepage changes every hour. Also, the website’s slideshows can be viewed full-screen or as a single-page list. In a nutshell, the design is perfectly simple and the photography is deliciously stunning. Warning: You will lick your screen. Every. Single. Time.
This, my dear friends, is how you please your readers. So, go on. Check it out, because it’s magnificent.
Epicurious has the entire world like:
They’ve even managed to impress Kanye (and we all know how hard it is to please Yeezus).