It features recipes, cooking tips, travel information, restaurant reviews, chefs, wine pairings and seasonal/holiday content and has been credited by The New York Times with introducing the dining public to "Perrier, the purple Peruvian potato and Patagonian toothfish".

The Batterberry's saw "a big changeover at the moment we founded Food and Wine in the late '70s" from a time when "it was the little wife in the kitchen" to a period in which more men developed an interest in cooking.

By 1980, when it was sold to American Express, the magazine had circulation of 250,000 per issue, evenly split by gender, and was distributing 900,000 copies a month as of 2009.

[10] The event celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2012, featuring singers Cee Lo Green, Elvis Costello, athlete Wes Welker, and chef Bobby Flay.

[11] A trip to the event is offered as part of the grand prize for the winner of the reality television series Top Chef.

Among the notable chefs recognized by the magazine are: Thomas Keller (1988), Nobu Matsuhisa (1989), Nancy Silverton (1990), Tom Colicchio (1991), Eric Ripert (1992), Nancy Oakes (1993), Michael Cordúa (1994), Anne Quatrano (1995), Barbara Lynch (1996), Daniel Patterson (1997), Michael Symon (1998), John Besh (1999), Andrew Carmellini (2000), Wylie Dufresne (2001), Grant Achatz (2002), Stuart Brioza (2003), Graham Elliot (2004), Daniel Humm (2005), David Chang (2006), Gabriel Rucker (2007), Ethan Stowell (2008), Linton Hopkins (2009), Roy Choi (2010), and Carlo Mirarchi (2011).

[14] All of the Best New Chefs are listed below by year:[15] Food & Wine magazine was purchased from American Express Publishing by Time Inc. on October 1, 2013.