About Sumac magazine

Sumac is more than just a food magazine, it’s a whole community that aims to appreciate life, in all its wild diversity, through the lens of humanity’s most basic, common ritual: sharing food and drink. In a world that’s full of barriers, we want to tear down walls by breaking bread with strangers through the medium of a handsome 128-page print magazine full of stories from fascinating humans from around the planet.

Spicy storytelling

Just like our content, our creative team is global in avor. We embrace the clean, elegant Scandinavian photography and design, and we combine it with the intercontinental-crossroads-passion and spicy storytelling of our Istanbul-born, New-York based Editor in Chief Ali Tufan Koc, and our New York-born, Costa Rica-based Managing Director Max Marshall. We present our content through page-turning essays, poetic creative pieces, and stunning photography.

Real events with real people

What good is a beautiful, fragrant meal if you can’t taste it? We wouldn’t be doing our mission justice if we kept the food, drink, and laughter paper-bound. We host real events with real people and real meals to as a way to practice what we preach – connecting people with food! It may be easy to harbor stereotypes about refugees you’ve never met. But when you taste the way they celebrate over grandma’s cooking at the same, shared table, we assure you, the imaginary walls melt away and lifelong bonds are formed!

First print issue: May 2019

The Sumac team

Ali Tufan Koç 

Ali is an editor, writer, and speaker whose passion for journalism began in his early years of college. He studied Business at both SUNY New Paltz and Istanbul Technical University, and Journalism at New York University. He worked for many years as a cultural columnist and features editor at daily newspapers throughout Istanbul, Turkey. After having worked as a Feature Editor at GQ Turkey since the launch of the magazine, he started his own consultancy where he works with brands and professionals as a content consultant in Istanbul and New York. Having studied Business, Culture, and Media, he is inspired by the wisdom in culture and communication and the power of meaningful experiences that help us live wisely as well as the potential of human design to challenge how we live and offer ways in which we might live better. He regularly facilitates classes at The School of Life. His first book, a novella called “No One Dies in This City: A 24-hour Journey in New York Subways” published in 2019 in Turkey. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.