Flavours behind uplifting Queer Food culture

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Scribe is a student-run publication based in the GTA that covers everything from social issues to culture and lifestyle. This spring, we tell stories from the mindset of a 20-something and the conversations shaping their world.

If you told Parish five years ago that she would become an executive director for a queer advocacy foundation, she wouldn’t have believed you. In her eyes, it would’ve seemed like an unobtainable hope for a woman of colour to be in a position like this—especially one who used to be rejected by the food industry because of her identity.  

Just like the queer identity itself, the culture of queer food and the history is flexible depending on who you ask. It’s not rainbow hamburgers or colourful salads. It lacks a concrete definition but is changing and developing.

Vanessa Parish

For people like Vanessa Parish, queer food means having a safe space where she can exist. The idea is that fellow queer folk can make a meal and share it amongst themselves.  

Becoming one of the most notable figureheads for this movement is not something Parish expected to have part of this definition. 

As one of the founders of Queer Food Foundation (QFF), she’s able to do exactly that.  When it first began during COVID-19, she says the organization was acted as a mutual aid that helped people within marginalized communities who had low-income jobs.   

“Each of us were doing different things in the industry at the time and not all of us were chefs,” she says. 

“Myself, I was working on a personal project, Tasty Tutelage, where I was basically taking donations and buying people groceries with those donations, but also doing group cooking classes with those groceries so people learn how to utilize what we send out,” she says. 

After the constant opportunities given from larger corporations, and support from people within marginalized communities, QFF has evolved to become something bigger.  

On top of the support they give to low-income, marginalized individuals, QFF also aims to give a platform to Queer-owned businesses and industry professionals that would typically struggle to thrive within the cis male-dominated industry. 

Parish even hopes to research and house data from queer industry professionals and businesses throughout the U.S. and Canada, showcasing how many queer people truly exist within the industry. As of the publication of this article, the survey is still in beta-testing. 

“We're making sure that the questions we’re asking are as informative to the mission of what we're trying to do. A lot of food insecurity surveys ask about socioeconomic status, age, race, location, things like that,” she says.  

“But we want to ask those other questions like, does your employer give you a discount or do they give you food for free? That is a contribution to food insecurity. If you can’t eat when you work at a restaurant, that’s something bonkers to me,” she says. 

This idea came about after Parish learnt that there was no data that truly showcases the queer population, something she hopes to do once this data is published in the near future. 

“We’ve always been here. It’s not like a seed was planted and queer people just came out of it, you know? It was very much people just started feeling more safe about having this conversation,” Parish says. 

For other people, however, queer food is more than just having a safe space to share and create food at the dinner table.

Alexandra Ketchum

The Quebec native always adored the idea of creating a conference all about queer food. She never imagined it would come into fruition after playful banter with her colleague, Megan J. Elias. 

“I was giving a book talk at the university [for my book], Ingredients for Revolution, and she came aside and said, ‘Oh wouldn’t it be cool if there was a queer food conference?’” Ketchum says. 

“I think she made it as a side comment, but I was like, yes, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger because we got really excited about it,” she says. 

In April 2024, the attendance for the Queer Food Conference was astounding, with over 100 people physically in attendance and even more online. It hosted panels that taught attendees queer table manners, to potlucks for community building. The Boston-based conference acted as a way for queer individuals to both connect and have a platform with like-minded individuals. 

A second Queer Food Conference is planned to take place in Montréal from May 1 to 3, 2026. Just like the first conference, it will be in-person and hybrid. 

The first conference itself even produced a cookbook with participants. Filled with unique remarks and thoughts from 39 different contributors, the anthology celebrates the farm-to-table industry queer people thrive in. Titled Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food. It is aiming to be published in Fall of 2026. 

“It’s about creating community. Creating a connection that has to do with the people who make the food [that allows people to] identify as part of the community, or in partnership with the community,”
- ALEXANDRA KETCHUM, food historian

The Queer Food Conference isn’t the only experience Ketchum has with queer food, however. Ketchum explores her deep interest in food history and restaurants as a food historian and assistant professor at McGill University. 

Throughout her time as a food historian, she discovered that queer food has a rich history. 

Her website, the Feminist Restaurant Project, includes a directory of feminist restaurants. Many of them played an important role within history by providing spaces for marginalized genders and communities.  

These physical spaces are factors that coincide with Ketchum’s definition of queer food. Similar to Parish, Ketchum believes that community plays a key role in defining something as queer food.  

“It’s about creating community. Creating a connection that has to do with the people who make the food [that allows people to] identify as part of the community, or in partnership with the community,” Ketchum said. 

Another important factor is the food itself. Certain recipes are tied to different pieces of history and locations that often hold symbolic meaning to the queer community. For the food itself to be able to reflect queer values and culture is essential to the definition of queer food.  

Besides the physical spaces that exist for the LGBTQ+ community that highlight the values of queer food, Ketchum also said queer food has become more recognized through traditional media. News and magazine publications, such as New York Times and Bon Appetit, highlight queer food and the experiences of queer individuals within the industry. 

More locally, publications such as Toronto Star highlight queer food spaces that never initially aimed to act as a beacon for queer food experiences. 

Queens of Dim Sum

Ryan Tran has always been passionate about the Asian queer community within Toronto. As a previous manager of education and outreach for Asian Community Aid Services (ACAS) in Toronto, creating and hosting Queens of Dim Sum is something natural for him.  

He always had an interest in creating a cultural spin to drag brunch that is also readily accessible compared to the typical drag scene that coincided at nightclubs.  

With help from Sum “DJ Sumation” Wong, Tran and Wong were able to bring Queens of Dim Sum light in May 2022.  

The idea of dim sum drag brunch worked perfectly with the restaurant they chose to partner with. Sky Dragon, located in Chinatown, had already worked with ACAS for past events. Like many Chinese restaurants, it already had the equipment and space for performances and fostering communal settings. 

The co-founder looks back fondly, reminiscing about a memory when the restaurant manager stood up for them. A customer had come up to the manager asking why they were holding drag performances. 

“He was like, no, this is great. We’re happy to have them and we’re going to keep doing this. I was like, ‘this straight middle-aged man stood up for us.’ It was really, very, very sweet to hear that,” Tran said.  

Alongside bringing support and awareness for those outside the community, Tran is also proud of the space and platform he and Sum were able to create for drag queens within the community. 

The event created a ‘home’ for many of these drag queens, with many of them able to benefit from a permanent place to perform without having to worry about finding new gigs to reintroduce themselves to. 

Becoming cultural symbols of queer food were not Tran and Wong’s intentions, Queens of Dim Sum has become an example of queer food and how queer spaces like this are important. 

The definition of queer food for Tran doesn’t necessarily coincide with him, but instead with Queens of Dim Sum and what it represents as a whole.  

“It’s a nice marriage of both Asian and queerness together,” Tran says, smiling, “You always just have to have food to bring people together. It’s a way to bond and connect with our community.”  

Queer Foodies TO

As someone who’s been a foodie for most of their life and currently works within a communication role in a local community centre, founding Queer Foodies felt very natural to Steph Cook. 

First beginning after COVID-19, Cook noticed many people were craving a sense of connection with fellow Queer people that strayed from the typical night scene that many are used to. 

Their events are often met with a range of different people, some as young as 21 or as old as 40. Some come with a group of friends looking for a fun event to do downtown, while others come alone looking for new people to meet. 

Cook reminisces about one event where they held a bakery crawl. Guests were welcomed to walk around Toronto and visit different local-owned bakeries. They hope to host more events in the future partnering with other Queer groups that share the same mindset as them. 

Their work in Queer Foodies even aids them in their job in communication, often employing inclusive ways for posts advertising the events. Sometimes it’s avoiding certain fonts, other times it’s saying information to neurodivergent or non-able-bodied people to include them. 

For Cook, the concept of queer food isn’t something that is obvious to them and their organization but is still something that resonates with them. 

“For so many people, identity is inextricably linked to other aspects of their life, whether it’s their career, hobbies, or just their identity. I just personally love any opportunity to combine multiple aspects of my identity, and I’ve definitely have done that through Queer Foodies,” they say. 

“Eating doesn’t just have to be this thing that you do alone in your home. There are so many cultures where participating in eating is so intrinsic to them,” they say. 

Cook isn’t the only one who believes Queerness is often encapsulated with one’s identity. For many Queer chefs in the industry such as Eyal Liebman, this is obvious to them. 

Eyal Liebman

Liebman began their journey as a private chef when they realized the monotony within the typical restaurant industry. Going into work for 12 to 14 hours and hearing about nothing but other workers fantasize about other employees, on top of the repetitive nature of the work, made the experience lacklustre for them. 

“I’m nonbinary and I’m attracted to everyone, and I would love to speak about boobs and ass… but talking about it for 14 hours?” They say. 

Nowadays, the North York-based chef finds themselves in the homes of the top one per cent. There they cook meals and explain the historical and cultural story behind them; besides the comments they tend to hear about people criticizing their gender identity. 

Regardless, Liebman acknowledges that everything in life is on a spectrum. Although they have freedom as a private chef, it comes with its own sets of cons. 

“I’m going to people’s homes that sometimes I don’t want to be in their homes. In a commercial kitchen, there was a wall or at least a divider,” they say. 

“I didn’t have to be nice to clients. A majority of my clients know how to read the room, but I do have those [moments] that I sometimes need to be like, yeah, no, we’re not talking about my existence,” they say. 

The freedom as a private chef is still appreciated, however, with a lot of their work focused on showcasing food as an artform. To Liebman, food is art. Food is political, despite what people say. 

 Even if some things might be forgotten or lost in the moment, Liebman hopes that their work encourages people to start questioning the typical binaries they are used to. 

“They might wake up tomorrow morning and vaguely remember the discussion we had about the tomato being from the Americas and start googling,” they say. 

Queer food is a concept that hasn’t crossed their radar, but the beliefs behind it are something that Liebman has unconsciously touched on within their career. 

For Liebman, everything has a sense of fluidity to it. Everything is on some type of spectrum, especially identity. Not everything will have a set definition attached to it. 

“I remember I was in school and we were talking about what’s art and what’s journalism and what’s not journalism and what is a film and what is not a film… and I’m like, stop this and just leave things up in space let’s all learn,” they say. 

                                                             . . . . . 

Just like the queer identity, everyone’s definitions of queer food have different meanings but ultimately come together to form something with some common ground. 

For Vanessa Parish, it is having a space that feels safe and comfortable. For Alex Ketchum, it means community and food that coincides with the rich culture and history behind the LGBTQ+ community. For Ryan Tran, it means exploring intersectionality in a way that fosters understanding and community and for Steph Cook and Eyal Liebman, it’s acknowledging fluidity in life. 

Although different, what these definitions have in common is the need for community and understanding. All these definitions showcase what queer people within the food industry want people to recognize. 

That the LGBTQ+ community is unique, vibrant, and welcoming. That the LGBTQ+ community may seem invisible, but its people are everywhere. They want to be accepted. They want to be listened to. They want to be heard. 

So maybe queer food doesn’t have a concrete definition that is obvious at a first glance. But after taking the time to learn and understand people’s experiences and hopes, especially how they are showcased within the food industry, will it become more apparent to the naked eye. 

And maybe, that’s what queer food is truly all about.