Food has always been more than sustenance. It is gesture, memory & ritual. It lingers in the kitchen table’s conversation, in the grease on fingertips, in the quiet work of peeling, boiling, fermenting. Queer food, in turn, is not singular; it is plural & it is many. It is open to shaping by all who indulge in it. Queer food can mean so many things due to its unlimited richness, one which even rivals Nigella’s. We gathered with artists, growers, chefs, writers, performers & thinkers to stir a collective pot. Not to define queer food, but to allow it’s slippages, to poke through its holes & to expand its meanings, undo its hierarchies & celebrate its mess. 

From composting piled & reimagined utensils to communal, meditative spice blending, & slow fermentation of thought, we delved into food as a site of queer kinship, survival, storytelling & pleasure. Together we examined the tools we use, the ecologies we cook in & the politics of our plate. 

Queer Food is a recipe not for replication. It’s a table with no head, a collection of mouths, a bubbling pot of a shared hunger. This is not a fixed syllabus, nor a traditional residency. It is a digesting of praxis: slippery, surprising, & tart.

From Barney Pau opening with queer ferments, to Marf Summers Non-Passing Utensils reimagining the tools we make & use, the week was grounded in experimentation & care. 

Hands & stories met outside at Dyke Kitchen, as we explored South African outdoor cooking methods & traditional foods on Heritage Day. We aimed to challenge ’conventional’ notions of the kitchen & its link to gender & sexuality. We discussed our own cultural friction & ties to queerness & home over readings. Kindly nourished by Wholegood.

@sisterwomanvegan led Edible Identities, Dee Pascal Mahoney guided Queer Composting & Ghost and John performed Performance with Food, before @prishita_eloise closed with Food for Thought: Mapping Queer Memory.

On the final night, @kiwi.munched gathered us for a closing banquet, a beautiful meal that became a collective act of service & celebration. 

Hosted across Delfina Foundation, Queer Circle, Allens Community Garden & House of Annetta.

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