Your queer foodie guide: LGBTQ+ chefs, books, tours and events to know
Tim Mosenfelder // FilmMagic
Your queer foodie guide: LGBTQ+ chefs, books, tours and events to know
Looking to taste your way through queer culture? From guided food tours to groundbreaking cookbooks and can’t-miss culinary events, queer food spaces are thriving across the U.S. and beyond, News Is Out reports.
Whether you’re craving bourbon and bites in Louisville, exploring food justice, or bookmarking your next favorite cookbook, there’s a world of queer food experiences waiting to be discovered. Here’s a roundup of the tours, events, books and chefs putting queer food on the map.
Pride Plates: A queer food tour of Louisville
If you haven’t heard of Louisville, Kentucky’s gayborhood, here’s an intro. The Highlands is the heart of the city’s queer community, lined with shops, nightclubs and restaurants. It’s also home to Pride Plates, a walking food tour hosted by Louisville Food Tours that highlights the city’s culinary roots and the LGBTQ+ people and places shaping its food scene. One of only two queer-themed food tours in the U.S., Pride Plates has collaborated with groups like Queer Kentucky, the LGBTQ+ archives at the University of Louisville, and local community members. The $159 tour includes a sampling of Kentucky’s famous bourbon cocktails or mocktails.
The Queer Food Foundation, or QFF, was founded in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 quarantine to meet the food-related needs of the queer community. Since then, the group has grown and raised more than $30,000 for queer-focused programming and $50,000 to combat food insecurity in the Black queer and trans communities. Its Queer All Year program partners with the James Beard Foundation to host virtual food education panels.
After a successful inaugural event in 2024, the Queer Food Conference is back May 1-3, 2026. Taking place in Montreal, Quebec, the conference brings together food industry professionals, academics, foodies and more for panels and workshops on topics like LGBTQ+ cookbooks, farming and land movements, potlucks, food advertising, restaurant management, catering, brewing, food writing and community building.
The book Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food, inspired by the 2024 event and edited by organizers Alex D. Ketchum, PhD, and Megan J. Elias, will be released in October and is available for pre-order now.
Crave: Bold Recipes That Make You Want Seconds by Chef Karen Akunowicz
Chef Karen Akunowicz is a James Beard Award-winning chef and mainstay on cooking competition shows like Bravo’s Top Chef and Food Network’s Tournament of Champions. Her Boston-based restaurant Fox & the Knife serves up Northern Italian fare and the queer chef even sells her own line of artisanal food products like olive oil and pasta kits. Her 2021 cookbook Crave: Bold Recipes That Make You Want Seconds exemplifies her style of cooking with big flavors and rustic charm.
Accidentally on Purpose by Chef Kristen Kish
The world-traveling television personality, restaurant owner and host of Top Chef, Kristen Kish has come out with a memoir all about her adventurous life. Kish shares stories from her early days as an adoptee from South Korea living in the Midwest, to coming out as queer, to becoming an internationally recognized culinary figure.
Pioneering chef Susan Feniger is probably best known as one of the Food Network’s original stars, alongside business partner Mary Sue Milliken in Two Hot Tamales. However, Feniger has been making waves in California cuisine since the early ‘80s. In Forked, director (and Feniger’s life partner) Liz Lachman explores Feniger’s early career, TV stardom and struggles as she tries to open her first new restaurant without Milliken in 2009. The film combines footage that Lachlan has collected over the years as well as archival images and interviews with Feniger, Milliken and more.
The Original PieCaken by Chef Zac Young
Fans of Food Network’s Halloween Baking Championship or Best Thing I Ever Ate will know pastry Chef Zac Young from his thoughtful and playful feedback. But did you know that Young created the PieCaken? Inspired by the TurDucken (a chicken stuffed in a duck, stuffed in a turkey), the PieCaken is a decadent dessert with layers of pecan pie on the bottom, pumpkin pie in the middle, and spice cake on top, covered with cinnamon buttercream and finished with apple pie filling. Through Goldbelly, Young offers the PieCaken, which can be shipped directly to your home for any special occasion.
This story was produced by News Is Out and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
