Last week, in Montréal, a city that I am now committed to spelling the right (Frenchy) way, a friend and I skittered all over the place via le Métro, seeking out the best snacks (poutine, smoked meat sandwiches, oysters, babka, supple slices of smoked sturgeon, tamago sandos, more poutine) between stints of attending the second-ever Queer Food Conference, hosted at McGill University. The food we sought wasn't "queer" per se — but we are both queer and trans nonbinary so maybe it counts.
My friend (and once-collaborator) Blue Delliquanti and I were there to put on a queer food-flavored comic-making workshop inspired by our work on Meal, a graphic novel about queerness and eating insects. I confess that it initially felt daunting to be among this gathering of academics, food activists, and others. The work of pinning down and defining a nascent field of study is a heavy one: We were all like a polyamorous rookery of penguins, each taking a turn to incubate the fragile and still-kinda-sticky idea of Queer Food. We wondered aloud, in the earnest parental way, about what our baby would become. What will it look like when it hatches? What are we afraid of? How do we best nurture it for the future? Is this even viable?
Over cocktails at the bodega-style spot Dépanneur Le Pick Up, a group of us — too many to squeeze into one picnic table, but too eager to connect — alternately celebrated and commiserated over the diffuse definition of queer food. A few people who drove across the border from the United States recounted epistemically difficult run-ins with border officials when they said that they were traveling for a "queer food conference." "What's that?" the gruff officials would ask. "Well... how much time do you have?" would be the general answer.