Talking queer food—and where to find it in Montreal

Alex Ketchum has been thinking about feminist cafés and queer food for a long time. So much so that Ketchum, assistant professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill has written a book about it: Ingredients for Revolution, an exploration of the history of feminist restaurants, cafés, and coffeehouses, with a comprehensive look at the ways these spots foster non-capitalist, non-hierarchical business practices.

And now she’s thinking about queer food in Montreal (and elsewhere), how to define it, and where to find it.

Food politics, business practices, political activism

“One way to think about queer food has to do with the producers themselves,” Ketchum says. “Are there queer chefs or queer owners or managers? That’s a traditional way to think of it, even talking about the marketing of the restaurant, café, or bar.” 

It’s more than just the management or marketing, though. “The other part is about how the space actually caters to queer community building,” says Ketchum.

That might take the form of organizing events or summits, sponsoring other community organizations, or fundraising. Making spaces safer, such as gender-inclusive washrooms, or having different kinds of health information available can also help to define a queer space. 

Champs is one place Ketchum talks about, an LGBTQ sports bar on St-Laurent that’s great for watching women’s hockey. “In the past, they’ve had pop-ups with vegan tacos,” Ketchum says. “For me, that speaks to the intersections with vegetarianism and queer culture.”

Brasserie Harricana is another woman-owned queer space in the city. Harricana partners with organizations such as Lez Spread the Word, a widely distributed print publication dedicated to producing content by and for lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer women to defy stereotypical portrayals and give greater visibility to positive role models—and had a special beer that came with a copy of the magazine. 

Queer spaces are safe spaces

“Sometimes it's signage,” Ketchum says. “Even the name of the space or marketing or how people talk about their space in interviews. Bulletin boards or places where people could share about community events, like pop-up events or space takeovers.”

“You can also think about safe spaces with good HR practices—like mat leave, no abuse in the kitchen, and respect,” Ketchum says. “Being queer isn't just like who you have sex with or who you love, but it's also about political solidarity.” 

Ketchum wrote most of her dissertation—which ultimately became her book—at Dispatch. She appreciates that it’s woman-owned and worker-focused, with good business practices and ethical sourcing of their beans. With two cafés in the city, and a national distribution network, Dispatch is part of a multi-national gender equity project supporting women who grow beans in Honduras as well as a number of other fair trade initiatives.

I would never dismiss a restaurant that wasn’t queer, but I would go out of my way to support a queer-owned spot or queer chef.

Ketchum appreciates the fact that Dispatch really walks the talk with an understated way, but with great impact: “It’s not like there are rainbow flags everywhere at the café, but there are signs in the washroom about respecting the pronouns of staff, and they recognize the importance of the workers having a living wage.”

Speaking from experience in the industry, “I would never dismiss a restaurant that wasn’t queer, but I would go out of my way to support a queer-owned spot or queer chef,” adds chef Stephanie Darwish, executive chef at the Mount Royal Tennis Club.

Darwish fully agrees with Ketchum’s perspective; for her, having time off during the year and working 80-hour weeks in the summer allows her to spend more time with her young family during the school year. 

Darwish worked at the late restaurant Diplomate and bar Alexandraplatz, and most recently at Elena and Gia. She now thrives on running her own. “I try to build an inclusive, nice team. It helps me, and it helps the community of our staff. Even the language I make acceptable in the kitchen I run—like we have non-binary staff who work with us, so it’s not on the table to make jokes like that.”

It’s not like there are rainbow flags everywhere at the café, but there are signs in the washroom about respecting the pronouns of staff, and they recognize the importance of the workers having a living wage.

While Darwish and Ketchum come from two different places—the kitchen versus academia—the notion of creating a safe space is definitely common ground. As well, supporting queer producers and chefs and building supportive environments define queer food for both of them. 

What queer food itself is is a little bit trickier, because sometimes it's the idea of who's making the food—but there are also certain foods tied to different community histories.

And the food?

“It's not really like all queers come from one place and grew up with the same ingredients, and brought those ingredients with them when they moved,” says Darwish. 

Pinning down queer food to say it’s one dish or another would be disingenuous—even though Lesbian Lentils is apparently a thing, as is Green Goddess dressing. Rainbow images, rainbow cakes, and all manner of lavender can be considered. 

“The major component would be the food itself or the drinks themselves. It’s a little bit complicated to define,” says Ketchum. “It's pretty easy to say like, here's someone who owns this place, or here are things that they're doing. But what queer food itself is is a little bit trickier, because sometimes it's the idea of who's making the food—but there are also certain foods tied to different community histories.”

Queer cookbooks, AIDS, and pot brownies

Ketchum’s search for a definition of queer food is leading her to Boston in April, where she’s organizing the in-person and online Queer Food Conference to workshop the term, along with other scholars, activists, artists and food people.

The conference program will be a collaborative queer cookbook- with recipes and headnotes contributed from participants, Ketchum says.

It’s not the first time she’s tried to answer this kind of question. This time, it’s “What’s the Recipe for a Queer Cookbook”, a deep and oftimes entertaining dive into the cookbook medium.

That includes Alice B. Toklas’s 1954 cookbook as her ode to her partner Gertrude Stein’s favourite recipes—including her special brownies. Ketchum alludes to the context of the early days of AIDS in San Francisco, where patients needed to keep their bodies physically healthy so they wouldn't lose weight. 

“Volunteers would be distributing food through Meals on Wheels type organizations, and one woman started baking pot into brownies to help people suffering continue to eat, as in a medical marijuana thing. So in that way pot brownies were queer food, right?”

Whether it’s Toklas’ homespun book or the glossy Let’s Do Dinner by Antoni Porowski, the most common element of these cookbooks is that someone queer wrote it — and presumably queer people may cook from it.

So where can you get queer food in the city?

“Montreal is just such a queer friendly city. There’s no restaurant that I would go to that I would feel I’m not welcome with my super gay family,” says Darwish. “I feel that every restaurant is a little bit gay — whether or not it’s the ownership, the staff, the kitchen.”

As Ketchum gets ready for her upcoming conference, here are some of the spots in town she recommends: 

• Café Iso on Duluth is another queer owned space, with sandwiches and coffee. “They’ve highlighted their queerness from the outset,” says Ketchum. This is a space where you’re meant to be social: it’s tiny, but it’s a wifi/laptop-free zone.
• Fine dining restaurant L’ideal on Ontario Est “feels like the fanciest space, but you can still get beer there for $10,” says Ketchum. “One of the owners is affiliated with Lez Spread the Word, a publication by and for the community.” 
• Café Reine Garçon, another Duluth café close to Parc Lafontaine, describes itself as a queer-owned, inclusive space that's also available to rent.
• Nueva Era is a small stationery store and micro-café on St-Hubert featuring local products designed by queer people and/or BIPOC artists alongside affordably-priced classes (including coffee). 
• There’s the Mile Ex’s queer-owned Dep Le Pickup and its summertime streetside patio, homemade burgers (veg and non-veg) meaty and non-meaty (see: halloumi) sandwiches, Friday ribs, and lots of drinks from scratch cocktails.
• The online queer bakery, too: Violet Bakehouse, with fanciful gluten-free and dairy-free two and three tier-cakes your dreams to make your sweet dreams come true.