Celebrating Pride Month at HRN
By: Anna Oakes and Caroline Fox
For many people, Pride Month stands at a kind of temporal point – it’s just as much about remembering the queer and trans people who’ve come before, as it is celebrating the present. Though Pride this month may be missing some of the exuberance of years before, it comes at an especially transitional moment, as we imagine what a reopened world could and should look like.
Here’s a collection of some of our favorite episodes that explore queer and LGBTQ+ food, and food figures. Some address on the political legacy of the Stonewall Riots, like Meat and Three’s “Riots & Refuge,” and others, like HRN’s show Queer the Table, explore queer food in all its forms and intersections. Happy Pride!
The FeedFeed Episode 18: Tasty Pride With Jesse Szewczyk: Former Buzzfeed editor and author of the new Tasty Pride cookbook, Jesse Szewczyk joins the podcast to talk about queer food and his journey breaking into the food media space.
Eat Your Words Episode 229: Big Gay Ice Cream: Eat Your Words celebrates the coming of summer with Bryan Petroff and Douglas Quint, founders of Big Gay Ice Cream. These friends, who started with an ice cream truck and saw their business grow into multiple shops across New York City and now Los Angeles, chat with host, Cathy Erway about their phenomenal growth as well as their new book Big Gay Ice Cream: Saucy Stories & Frozen Treats: Going All the Way with Ice Cream.
Queer the Table Episode 18: Rest + Resilience With Ianne Fields Stewart: Nico speaks to Ianne Fields Stewart. Ianne is the founder of the Okra Project, an organization that hires Black trans chefs to go into the homes of other Black trans people to prepare a delicious home-cooked meal, building community along the way.
Why Food? Episode 131: Jennifer Crawford: My Queer Kitchen: Join co-hosts Vallery and Ethan for a conversation with Jennifer Crawford. Jennifer has been cooking non-stop their whole life, especially since getting sober in early 2018 and subsequently winning MasterChef Canada in 2019. They're a disk jockey turned food writer, chef, aspiring pro-wrestler, and moon mist ice cream enthusiast. In their My Queer Kitchen online show and column with Xtra Magazine, they focus on the intersections of food, feelings, identity and courage.
Meat and Three Episode 42: Riots & Refuge: Queering the Table on the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall: This episode celebrates community builders and trailblazers by exploring the role food has played in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
Nico Wisler, host HRN’s Queer The Table brings us a story about the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, an uprising that preceded the Stonewall Riots by a few years and marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco. Then Aleah Papes introduces us to Queer Soup Night, a Brooklyn-born queer party with soup at its center and a commitment to resistance, and Pauline Munch takes us all the way to Toronto for a very special drag brunch at the Glad Day Bookshop, “the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore.”
Queer the Table Episode 11: More Than Just Rainbow Cupcakes: Nico is joined by Ingrid Nilsen, who launched her first YouTube channel in 2009. After quickly amassing millions of followers under the moniker "missglamorazzi," Ingrid went viral in 2015 when she posted a raw, emotional coming out video on her channel. Since then, she has become a tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and representation. Her latest project, Cooking With Pride, is a web-series that invites queer chefs to teach viewers to make, and tell the stories behind, their favorite dishes.
A Hungry Society Episode 79: “Black People Are My Jam” Chefs Sicily & Mavis Jay of Food + People: Today’s guests are chefs Sicily Sewell Johnson and Mavis Jay Sanders, founders of Food + People. Food + People operates on the belief “every community should have access to quality food and every person deserves the dignity of a hot meal composed of ecologically responsible ingredients that nourishes their body from the inside out.” On the show they talk about food memories; MJ shares stories of being a queer, masc presenting Black woman in kitchens and Sicily shares how being surrounded by women, people of color and the LGBTQIA community throughout her career has helped her see how things should be done instead of just sticking to the status quo.
Why Food? Episode 160: Andre Springer: Shaquanda Will Feed You: Join co-hosts Ethan and Vallery for a conversation with Andre Springer, Founder of Shaquanda Will Feed You. Andre was born in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, and is of Barbadian descent. Andre began performing in the streets and bars of NYC at the age of 20, with much of his art being the creation of his drag alter ego, Shaquanda Coca Mulatta. The body of Andre's work has been in performance, sculpture, and film. While manifesting his creative side he also spent 18 years in the restaurant industry as a waiter, bartender, manager, and maitre d'. Shaquanda’s Hot Pepper Sauce was created at Bushwig in 2014, a drag festival that happens every year in NYC. Shaquanda’s Hot Pepper Sauce can be found in specialty shops across the United States and most recently in whole foods at all the North East region locations. The brand was featured in popular food publications like Bon appetite, Edible, Serious Eats, Delish, Buzz Feed, NY Times Gift Guide, and was a favorite in season 9 and 13 of the popular hit youtube series “Hot Ones”
Queer the Table Episode 10: Cheers for Queer Beer!: When Bhavini Patadia met their now-girlfriend Saskia Ullman, they didn't even really drink beer- they just drank it to impress her. On this episode, both Bhavini and Saskia tell the story of how that initial attempts to woo a girl led to the founding of Queer Beer: a full-fledged brewery driven by the goal of creating space for and giving back to London's LGBTQ+ community.
Snacky Tunes Episode 396: Queer Supper Clubs & No Vision: After lamenting how annoying it was trying to find someone to enjoy a three-hour tasting menu with who was not a girlfriend or partner, pals Alana McMillan and Sabrina Chen created the JaynesBeard Supper Club--a monthly culinary meetup for lesbian and queer women in NYC. JaynesBeard events range from cocktail parties to multi-course plated meals, and feature the talents of up-and-coming, mostly queer and female chefs and bartenders.
It’s a return engagement for one of our favorite bands, Grim Streaker. The Brooklyn five-piece was formed in 2016, and have earned critical acclaim and a dedicated following for their loud, frenetic punk sound which harkens to the likes of the Adolescents, the Dead Boys, X-Ray Spex and Fugazi. They join us in-studio to share their debut album, No Vision.
Cutting the Curd Episode 376: A Cheese Professional’s Journey within the “LGBrieTQ” Community: Cara Warren has worked in cheese since 2005 and is currently the East Coast Sales Manager for Isigny Sainte Mere. Cara's pairings wow'ed the room at The Cheeses of Europe Interactive Beer & Fromage Event last week, and on the same day Vice Munchies featured her along with a small group of lesbian and non-binary cheese professionals. Elena chats with Cara in the studio on the heels of both!
A Hungry Society Episode 75: Devonn Francis on Being a Chef and Artist in Equal Measure: On today’s show, Korsha talsk to chef, artist, model, photographer DeVonn Francis about food as art, the idea of expansiveness and hospitality. DeVonn runs Yardy, a pop-up series where he uses food, space, music and art to explore Blackness, queerness, immigration and more. He’s a first-generation Jamaican American and his cooking is influenced by the Caribbean.
Queer the Table Episode 19: Something Different About Us: Nico is joined by John Birdsall, whose biography "The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard," was just released. The book explores Beard's queerness, and the ways in which it trickled into his recipes, teachings, and American food culture as a whole.
