Roundtable: What Is Queer Food?

This story is part of"Queer As Food,"a series that explores the role of food in LGBTQ+ communities.

What is queer food? What is gay food? AsFood & Wine’s Senior Food Editor and a member of the queer community, I was trying to answer this for myself and I don't actually know that it can be defined or that there is an answer to this question. But I'm really interested in gathering perspectives from people I respect, and asking how their opinions are informed. So I gathered a virtual roundtable via Webex. Here’s what they had to say.

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）, Executive Chef, The Macintosh, Charleston, SC

Preeti Mistry, Chef, Author, Activist, Farmer, Oakland, CA

Tiffani Faison, Executive Chef and Owner, Big Heart Hospitality, Boston, MA

Tiffanie Barriere, Mixologist and Creative, The Drinking Coach, Atlanta, GA

Mary-Frances Heck:

约翰·伯德尔（John Birdsall）撰写了有关同性恋食物的文章亚搏电竞,记录男性的贡献有限okbook authors and observing that gay food is in the pursuit of pleasure. It's a joyful, delicious, over-the-top pursuit of satisfaction. And I think that's definitely one kind of gay food, but in thinking about it, I was actually watchingPose, if anybody's watched, it is this excellent...

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

Oh yeah!

Mary-Frances Heck:

I kept noticing that all the characters were gathering in that Chinese restaurant or mother was making dinner for everyone—it didn't matter what the food was—that nourishment and caring for a chosen family made me think that there was much more to this idea. And so, with that in mind, I wanted to pose the question: What's queer food?

Preeti Mistry:

约翰和我就几年前在一个小组中引用的文章进行了讨论。那是在骄傲期间，是我自己，约翰和尼克·夏尔马。我认为重要的一件事是，作为酷儿的人，我觉得这些规则已经不在窗外了。我想到的是，在2002年的烹饪学校里，我想到：“哦，我想和香菜代替帕斯利一起做一个persillade。”法国厨师是“什么？”我当时想，“好吧，为什么不呢？”我不明白这些盒子。

And so I think that from a very base place as chefs and cooks, I think that we just have the ability to see things differently. Angela Davis just made this comment about speaking about the trans community when it comes to police abolition, and we can see the world through a different type of gender binary, then we can see a lot of different possibilities.

So I feel that was something that kind of took it to another level. Yes, pleasure, and obviously the community that you're talking about. I mean, do you guys feel like that's true in your cuisine?

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

I feel like visibility is a big part of queer food. Just because we kind of exist in spaces where we don't always feel seen. And cooking is art. And it's our way to express ourselves. So just making sure that the emotion is tasted through the food and that our personalities are seen and like you were saying, using cilantro instead of parsley, kind of going away from what the status quo is or what the norm is and just doing what we could do to be different, to be seen.

I also think that connectivity and community is a big part of queer food. I don't necessarily think it's not a part of cis food. My favorite thing about food is that we all need it. And it's this great, universal connector—everybody needs to eat. Y'all could have been arguing but y'all both hungry, you go sit down at the table, and we're going to talk and we're going to have a conversation about it and I love food for that. And I could see how in queer communities just like how we were saying inPose，这是一个很大的连接件。每个人都坐在桌子旁，谈论自己的烦恼，无论天使在罂粟有多难过，他们俩仍然必须坐下来一起吃饭。伙计，这是一个很好的表演。

Another thing in me thinking about queer food is, you know, what does that really mean? For me immediately I was okay, so listening to Beyonce, Whitney Houston while you cook your food? That's got to be a part of it, right? “I'm Every Woman” is my pop-up song every day before service and I switch between the Whitney Houston and the Chaka Khan version so the kitchen doesn't really get too sick of it. But every day, we are listening to Whitney and they all know what's up. And I guess for me that's what queer food is, or that's what came to mind when I thought of it.

Tiffani Faison:

After reading the article, I thought a lot about the differences within queer food as a whole and then really thought a lot about, is it different for women than it is for men? The John Birdsall article was beautiful, but it was the sort of a flamboyant, gay, over-the-top thing. I don't know that women have been allowed to experience in ways that I think gay men have. Flying that flag really high in a way that I don't know that women have had the freedom to do for a lot of different reasons. Socio-economic reasons, obviously, body image stuff that's put on us constantly, and that's a fight back to have really unctuous rich over-the-top food. I thought a lot about the difference between—and is there a difference between—how queer food, and what it means for men and what it means for women?

Growing up in kitchens that were run by cis white guys it was this really structured, “do as I say not as I do,” screaming, yelling all the things, all the rules that applied to us and not them sort of thing. And what that meant for the community of the kitchen and a lot of it Preeti was saying about having already dismantled ideas about who I was in the world and expectations—whether it's kids, marriage, all those things—and having dealt with that in my life and then coming into this really structured environment in a kitchen and sort of re-indoctrinating myself into this box that I'd already broken out of it. There's some buy-in initially to be able to function in a kitchen like that. It's not about conversation and how to do the best thing and how to kind of crowdsource it in the moment, it's just get it done as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

When the conversation started about what I wanted out of my own kitchen, it was so far away from that. Still has to function quickly and efficiently. But how do we not only function in a way that everyone feels they have advocacy and they're seen and they can bring their whole self to the picture, but also how do we reach down and reach up? Like how do we reach up to our guests and communicate that, and then how do we create community with our farmers and our vendors and the people that are involved in that way?

在我的餐馆里对我来说，这意味着很大的意义 - 显然是参与和社区，但对我个人而言，这与财务状况有关。我不是一个男人，我没有嫁给一个男人。我一生中没有那种典型的男性赚钱结构。所以只是我，对吗？它的业务方面对我来说真的很重要，重要的是我要为自己创造积极的生活，然后我能够为与我合作的其他人创造这种生活，其中很多人都是酷儿，是有色人种吗？对我来说，这与财富无关，而是要拥有更健康的经济生活。这与金钱无关，你知道我的意思吗？

So managing the business of it has been such a huge part of that for me in terms of being able to, not only have the conversation with myself, but also have really hard and real economic conversations with the people around me about what it means to keep the business alive. It's multifaceted, but I've thought a lot in the last few years about what it means economically.

Tiffanie Barriere:

So it's interesting that I know when I was invited I was like, ‘What the f*ck is queer food?’ And then I was like well, obviously my first question is, so does it mean people who... I had to break it all down. John’s article was pretty amazing. It did break out some detail on the liquid side of things.

So my inner person is not Whitney Houston. “Never Too Much” is my song. But to me, just the feeling of “Never Too Much” is kind of like my flow of how to be in a cocktail world, because it's never too much. I mean, obviously liquor can be too much, but just my creativity, I just go really far. I think about some of the gay spaces that I'm in, and how there's always three things on the menu, at least in the South. You're going to have a beer menu which is just light, easy peasy. You're going to have shots all day long. And then we're gonna have martinis. We have every flavor of vodka that you can think about, and it's a martini. And it's not a gin martini. It's a vodka martini. Granted, Absolut sponsors the complete rainbow. But it's always this martini.

所以我在想,今天早上我喜欢,okay, so here we are in the club, queers in the club with martinis. I mean, come through completely. Is this a gay cocktail? Is this a class? This is a classification of a cocktail because the martini, in its history, in the ‘50s is quite classic. It says a lot when you sit down in a bar and you order a martini. My grandmother loved them and she’d say, "When you order a martini, watch how the bartender hands it to you. It's a slide. It's like here you go, martini. And then you're kind of looked at with this triangle glass with a stem. And people are looking at you like,damn, it's like that，你就像yeah, it's like that. It's like that.”

It's like that because I want my gin chilled with a skewer of some sort of fruit or garnish and I literally was thinking about this all night and this morning I was like, that's some gay shit. Maybe it's a martini. This is us, pinky out, fine glass.

I serve a lot of straights. And there's plenty of times that I've created a great cocktail, and I've used this specific glassware because it's what I want to use. I want this drink to be incredible. And then—and you guys have heard it— “Can you change my glass? Because I can't hold that.”

Change my glass? Who do you think you are? You think you're too masculine to hold a proper cocktail glass? So, if in fact we own clear cocktails, we also own the stemware too. And I mean it's something that I tease the straights—forgive me—I tease them for that. This macho-ness can't hold a proper cocktail glass. We laugh about it, trying to just cultivate more conversations in bar competitions, along with proper technique in a gay bar.

Preeti Mistry:

You know, it's interesting, because I often talk about the loss of gay bars in all the cities around the country. It's not that queer women don't go out. It's just that our tastes have changed as we've gotten older. I don't want to go to this dark, beer-soaked bar where the bartender looks at me with an eyeroll when I ask for a martini or a negroni. It's a shot and a beer kind of spot.

事实是，我想到我的餐厅 - 我不知道你们是否真的 - 我想到来我餐厅的酷儿家庭。我想到我的朋友在晚上10点上床睡觉的事实。并有一个七岁和九岁的孩子。

他们不会去射击和啤酒吧，并不是说这些酒吧对它们的出色事物并不适合，我们也喜欢它们。但是我40多岁。我不一定想去潜水吧。I want to get that negroni, I want to get that bee's knees, and I want to get it made properly, and so I think it's not saying, ‘Why are there not more lesbian bars?’ or ‘Why are lesbian bars dying out?’ and instead, how do we reimagine queer community and spaces for who we actually are in the world today?

Tiffanie Barriere:

Yeah, I have a friend here, he's a gay male. He's quite the party guy. We've had this talk back and forth, lesbians can't have a bar, you can't do it. His theory is, we're too sensitive. We can't walk into a bar and see the X [chromosome]. We cannot walk into the club and party in the situation and feel comfortable, because we have a chromosome that needs a few things before we get comfortable in a party. So I'm like, okay that's your theory but kind of sort of true, at least in Atlanta. There is that point, like you said, parents—or those who are mother in spirit—we are organizing in work, and in ethics, and in our soul, and being out at a bar isn't our getaway. That's not our getaway. And the gents tend to get away like that. They have better places to go because that's their getaway. That's not our getaway. But if a restaurant is gay and, and it's just for us, then there's nothing but ladies in there.

Tiffani Faison:

Tiffanie, it's really interesting talking about queer bars. Has your friend ever been to Cubbyhole?

Tiffanie Barriere:

Yeah.

Tiffani Faison:

我的意思是，它已经包装了。我不知道这是否是关于女同性恋者为什么不一定要有酒吧的对话。我的意思是，男人巡游，对吗？这就是为什么酒吧成功的原因，而女性在某个时候停止这样做或衰老。您进入Cubbyhole，没有30岁以上的人，努力巡游。这是一个非常成功的潜水酒吧。同性恋酒吧的重塑是什么，当时每个人都可以品尝适当的美味鸡尾酒，而当它不像陈旧的啤酒闻起来时，也许可以得到一些美味的食物体验？亚搏电竞这如何表现？

我认为现在，年轻女性以很长一段时间的方式以同性恋者的方式巡游有更多的自由。但是很多人已经转向应用程序。我认为关于我们的同性恋酒吧的对话是如此多，并且关于为什么对男性有效的因素有很多不同的因素。即使是一些正当的同性恋酒吧也没有像以前那样工作。令人心碎的是，我们普遍失去同性恋酒吧。

Tiffanie Barriere:

I mean there's two ways to celebrate. We're either going to turn up, turn up, I'm going to get with my girls, with my boys. Or I want something that's quiet and we're going to walk and we're going to put the rocks out and meditate—and I just think that our community has so much to celebrate. And I think the clubs or the scene itself, I don't think it will ever change. It'll just be a matter of, what can we get in there, maybe some more options besides the stale piss and bad tequila. Like, really bad tequila.

Preeti Mistry:

我记得20多岁,当我们to the club every night, and we didn't have any money and we would throw parties, and I would cook all this food and people would be like, damn Preeti this is so good. And that's when I—seeing everyone come together—that was why I went to culinary school and became a chef. And so, just sort of having that full circle and feeling like, yes, it is possible to create something that is more nourishing than a shot and a beer in a dive bar for people to come together and celebrate in.

另外，我认为奇怪的汤之夜是一个非常酷的事情，开始创造一些不同的东西。其中一些不是酒精，或者即使有些人在喝酒，它也不是酒吧。我认为这样的事情是一种非常有趣的方式，即新一代，年轻一代正在用食物重新想象酷儿空间。亚搏电竞

Tiffani Faison:

Preeti，我认为，您的意思是，您看到很多我们这个年龄的人已经过去了，在酒吧里长大，继续前进并想要不同的空间。而且，我正在观看全国各地的众多酷儿厨师和餐厅老板将这些元素带入餐厅，并将同性恋酒吧带入餐厅，无论是拖拉早午餐还是骄傲的庆祝活动，还是庆祝活动 -

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

Drag brunch? I'm sorry, I'm writing that down, I love that. I try not to say the b-word if I don't have to.

Tiffani Faison:

Yeah. I mean, the problem is as chefs, none of us want... I would love to cook eggs at night. I don't want to get up after Saturday night and cook eggs, that's it. Other than that, brunch is great.

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

That sounds excellent, cooking eggs at night.

Tiffani Faison:

Yes, so, going to brunch is different than cooking brunch. But yeah, brunch has traditionally been the gayest service, right? It's the gayest. So what does that mean to bring that into our restaurants and understand that and translate that in a way that feels really good? We have regular brunches that have elements of fun queerness, and we see a lot of families gathering in that way. And then there's drag brunch that is just—it is just all out. It is a ruckus. The drag queens are going to burn my sh*t down at one point. I'm just waiting for that day. They've broken furniture, there's broken glass all the time, I just…

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

我喜欢那个，我喜欢那个。

Tiffani Faison:

I drink my way through the last hour of it every time.

约翰·瓦特·艾安娜（John-Carter Ayanna）:

Yes, yes, I mean is it brunch if you're not hungover?

Tiffani Faison:

你为什么要？

Tiffanie Barriere:

Why aren't you brunching?

Tiffani Faison:

So yeah, I think it's fun to see that especially during Pride month, seeing how queer restaurant owners and chefs and bartenders are bringing elements of the queer community and gay bars into restaurants and making it our own.

Tiffanie Barriere:

We are changing so much and it's beautiful, but it's also for them to have a safe place to work. One of my trans friends is studying for the somm exam, and she's wondering about the comfort of working at this multimillion dollar steakhouse and putting out a nice bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and how comfortable this cis weirdo is going to feel when her presence comes [to the table] and knows more that he does. The acceptance, obviously with bills passing, us having a presence, more things written, more flags waved, it is what it is. I think we're going to bust doors down even more.