Highlights from the Kitchen Table Conversation- Queers at the Table: Eat, Talk, Write, Draw.

What happens when you gather farmers, historians, cartoonists, editors, and activists around a virtual kitchen table to talk about queer food? You get a conversation that’s as nourishing as it is radical—full of flavour, memory, and transformation. Hosted by the Oxford Food Symposium, this recent panel celebrated the launch of ‘Queers at the Table’, a vibrant anthology featuring 38 contributors exploring the intersections of queerness and food. Edited by Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias, the book is a kaleidoscope of essays, recipes, comics, and reflections that challenge dominant narratives and invite readers to taste queerness in all its forms. Meet the Editors – Alex D. Ketchum (she/her) is an assistant professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University. Her work focuses on feminist and queer food histories, and she is the author of Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses. She lives in Montreal, Quebec. Megan J. Elias (they/them) is the director of the Gastronomy Program at Boston University and an associate professor. A historian of food and culture, Elias has authored five books, including Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture. Their research explores food writing, gender, and home economics, and they currently serve as editor of the journal Food, Culture & Society. Moderated by Simon Thibault … a Halifax-based journalist, food writer, and radio producer. He is the author of Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food, a cookbook that explores Acadian culinary traditions through family stories and historical recipes. His work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio, The Walrus, and The Southern Foodways Alliance. Food as Memory, Resistance, and Kinship The panel opened with introductions to three contributors whose work exemplifies the book’s spirit: Taylor Hartson (they/them): Fermentation as Queer Metaphor Taylor, a sociology PhD student, farmer, and cheesemaker, offered one of the most poetic and intellectually rich metaphors of the session: cheese as a queer cultural object. In their essay, To the Fields and Into the Soil, Taylor explores how fermentation—especially in cheese—mirrors queer transformation. Cheese is born of collaboration: milk, bacteria, moulds, and time. It’s a process that resists control, embraces unpredictability, and thrives in the margins. “Some cheeses are unapproachable,” Taylor noted, “they fall outside the norm of a block of processed cheese.” In this way, cheese becomes a symbol of queer aesthetics—funky, bold, and unapologetically different. Fermentation, they explained, is a slow, intimate process that requires trust in unseen forces. It’s a dance between decay and creation, between risk and reward. “Cheese carries a sense of history and connection,” Taylor said, “to the animals it comes from, the people it feeds, and the cheesemakers who came before.” In this way, cheese becomes a vessel for queer memory, labour, and lineage. Taylor also challenged the dominant agricultural narrative, which is steeped in heteronormative ideals of inheritance and land ownership. Instead, they propose a queer ethic of farming rooted in kinship, care, and ecological interdependence. Their goats, their cheese, and their soil are part of a web—not a hierarchy. Joshua Lopez (he/him): Recipes as Resistance Joshua, a historian at the University of North Texas, spoke about food as a form of performance and voice—especially in queer and trans communities where language often fails to capture lived experience. His contribution to the book is a recipe for homemade Chico’s Tacos, a dish beloved in El Paso, Texas. But the recipe is more than comfort food. It’s a reclamation of memory. Joshua recounted a moment when five gay men were harassed at a Chico’s Tacos location for sharing a kiss. The incident sparked protests and became a flashpoint for LGBTQ+ rights in the region. By including the recipe, Joshua reclaims the space and reminds us that food is political. He also highlighted the labour of queer activism—potlucks, breakfasts, and community meals—as often invisible but deeply powerful forms of organizing. “Cooking is activist labour,” he said, “especially when it’s feminized and undervalued.” He shared the story of Norma Montellano, a Latina lesbian activist who organized community breakfasts as a way to build queer spaces in El Paso. These meals were not just sustenance—they were strategy. Mihael Beach Peralta (he/him): Comics, Kitchens, and Cultural Reconnection Mihael, an Afro-Latino trans cartoonist from Venezuela now living in Argentina, contributed a comic to the anthology that explores his journey of self-discovery through food. For Mihael, the kitchen was once a site of gendered oppression—he was expected to cook not because food mattered, but because of the gender he was assigned at birth. That changed when he met a queer couple who taught him to cook in a spirit of care and community. “It was the first time I cooked for someone else,” he said, “and it felt healing.” Through food, Mihael began to reconnect with his Venezuelan heritage—learning to make arepas and traditional sodas from YouTube videos and memory. His comic blends fantasy and autobiography, showing how queer food stories can be visual, emotional, and deeply personal. “It’s rebellion,” he said, “against the silence imposed by dictatorship and exile.” Cooking became a way to reclaim his identity, share his culture, and build new forms of kinship in diaspora. Writing Queer Food: Beyond the Academic Plate One of the most compelling threads in the conversation was the genre-bending nature of the book. From zines and almanacs to comics and oral histories, contributors embraced formats that defy academic rigidity and speak directly to lived experience. “Queerness is not just an identity,” Taylor said, “but an orientation to the world.” That orientation invites us to question systems—whether in agriculture, publishing, or family—and imagine alternatives rooted in care, creativity, and resistance. Joshua noted that queer theory often leans toward abstraction, while food is deeply material. Queer Is at the Table bridges that gap, grounding theory in taste, texture, and memory. Mihael’s comic, for example, doesn’t just illustrate a story—it is the story, told through colour, gesture, and emotion. Alex and Megan emphasized that the book’s format—published by Arsenal Pulp Press, not an academic press—was a deliberate choice. “We wanted something people would pick up,” Alex said, “something full of bright colours and Flavors.” The goal was accessibility, not gatekeeping. Queer Farming and the Ethics of Production The panel also dug into the politics of land and labour. Taylor highlighted how modern agriculture is built on heteronormative, capitalist models that exclude queer people from land ownership and stewardship. Queer farmers, they argued, are reimagining food systems through webs of kinship rather than profit. Mihael added a personal layer, describing how gendered expectations shaped his early relationship with the kitchen—and how queer community helped him reclaim cooking as joy, not obligation. Joshua’s archival work illuminated how queer food stories often go undocumented. His research into Latina lesbian breakfasts and potluck activism in El Paso revealed how cooking itself can be a form of resistance and organizing—especially when mainstream narratives erase these histories. Becoming the Ancestors of the Future In a poignant moment, the panel were asked: “Have you considered yourselves as being the ancestors of the future?” The question lingered, reminding everyone that queer storytelling is not just about the present—it’s about leaving traces, building archives, and creating a canon for those yet to come. Joshua reflected on the passing of a community member whose story he had archived. “It gave me a sense of urgency,” he said. Megan spoke about the importance of loosening assumptions in historical research—asking what’s possible, not just what’s documented. “If I don’t write about their partnerships,” they said, “I’m not really writing about them at all.” What’s Next? The conversation closed with calls to action: submit papers to the Oxford Food Symposium’s 2026 theme on poverty and food, attend the next Queer Food Conference in Montreal, and—most importantly—keep telling queer food stories. As Simon reminded us: “We do not have to stick within the traditional parameters that have been set before us. We can understand them and respect them, but we can also go outside of them.” So go ahead—buy two copies of Queers at the Table. One for yourself, and one to pass on. Because queer food is not just about what’s on the plate. It’s about who gets to sit at the table—and how we make room for each other.