As the Trump administration rolls back support for the LGBTQ+ community, celebrating queerness in the food world takes on a renewed sense of urgency this year.
Boston just celebrated its third annual Big Queer Food Fest. The prestigious James Beard Foundation has honoured three participating chefs: Boston chef Karen Akunowicz won a best chef award, and chef Arnold Myint of Nashville was a semi-finalist. Mavis-Jay Sanders of New York received the foundation’s leadership award for her work training incarcerated youth in the food and hospitality industry.
The three chefs joined Here & Now in the studio.
You’re here for the Big Queer Food Fest. The culinary world has historically been a place that has been dominated mostly by white men. Tell me about your journey.
Arnold Myint: “ I was born and raised in the business. So I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. My parents opened the first Asian market and Thai restaurant in the [1970s].
“I actually did not pick food as my career to begin with. I was a professional figure skater and I toured the world and ate my way around the world and then ended up falling into food as an excuse to stay in New York ’cause my dad would pay for education. So I faked culinary school, but I fell in love with it. And now my parents passed. So I just took over the business with my sister and now I cook full time and I love it.”
Mavis-Jay Sanders: “ I don’t wanna say that the industry has been dominated by white men. I wanna say that they are the people who made the organizations that shine a light on people. And so that’s who they highlighted. But when you think about who feeds people, I’ve never been in a kitchen where there isn’t some queer component, you know, that is a mainstay or a backbone of it, or some ethnic component that is a mainstay or a backbone of it.”
Karen Akunowicz: “ So much of our queer history is not told because folks had to be in the closet because it wasn’t safe for them to be out. So their stories have not been told or represented in the way that they should be because they could not be their true selves. And in a time right now, in 2025, when our community is being erased, we are going back to that time our trans brothers and sisters are being erased, our community is being erased. And that’s very reminiscent of so much of queer history.”
What’s the importance of creating safe spaces for queer people to work in food and safe dining spaces?
Myint: “ Cooking has always been a safe space for me. The kitchen has always been a place where the misfits always got to come together and support each other. You know, whether you’re a rock star or fully tatted, we’re all gonna have a beer and a whiskey at the end of the night.
“I never felt more comfortable than being in a kitchen at my early years, you know, with all the other bros and the dudes in there too, throwing down because it was just like, at the end of the day, what we’re serving on our plate has nothing to do with what we do after being in the kitchen. Right? So I’ve always felt that the kitchen has always been a safe place for minorities, for all genders, all races. And that’s how I treat my kitchen now, too.”
Sanders: “ I think there’s also something very special about the fact that your kitchen is like your family’s kitchen. Right? So that is definitely gonna be a space that was like created for you. And because of that, and it is like a family environment, it’s going to be open and like your parents want to protect you. They wanna make sure that you have a good space.
“Coming from fine dining restaurants, not so much. I definitely did work in, you know, some male-dominated kitchens, white men, like cis-hetero kind of situation. In the kitchen, we were targeted. The hard part about being like a [masculine] queer woman is people don’t take sexual harassment seriously. They look at you and they’re like, ‘Oh, no, it’s fine.’ Or like, even like I had like a gay man, he was a little more effeminate counterpart at a restaurant at one point, and you know, he was being harassed, but it was also by people who were down low who were afraid of coming out and were like super, like masculine. And so I think that there are special places that are very unique, but there’s a lot of places that can be harmful. And it is incumbent. And that’s why I love like being in this space right here and with these leaders, because you’re talking to the people who have fought to shine a light on what our industry should look like across the board.”
How do you think about the workplace you want to create?
Akunowicz: “We opened Fox & the Knife six and a half years ago and we opened Bar Volpe three years ago, and we always felt very clear about the kind of space we wanted. A space that was inclusive of everyone and where everyone was accepted exactly how they are and for who they are. We care what your pronouns are. Some of it’s just common sense in how you would want things done, and unfortunately, that’s not the way that I was necessarily raised in restaurants.
“It was not always the kindest place coming up in kitchens. I was almost always the only woman. And as somebody who’s queer and has been my entire life and is more feminine presenting, I always got the like, ‘You’re not really gay. You’re not really queer.’ And I was like, ‘mm, yeah, I am.’ And the harassment that I encountered was a little bit different. I definitely had moments where I fought back or was angry and I definitely had moments where I was like, ‘ha ha ha.’ And you kind of like get along to go along. And I’m not proud of that, but like as a 24-year-old person in a kitchen trying to be in a career that I was very passionate and dedicated to, you know, there’s a lot of that as well. And you just don’t want anyone to have to go through what you went through.”
Myint: “ My fine dining experience was somewhat different, I guess because I’m a male maybe. I was younger and I just really just hunkered down and let my work speak for what I could do. It makes me sad to hear this from your angle because I think I would probably be working next to you, not even realize that’s happening. So it’s interesting to see the perspective.”
Akunowicz: “ I think there’s the piece of putting your head down and working hard, right. It’s just you’re not always acknowledged for the work that you do in the same way. I was passed over for promotions and passed over to move up to the next station. When I was a line cook, when I knew that I was working harder, doing more and was a much better cook than the guy standing next to me and was looked over for things like that.”
Is there a particular moment in your career that led you to where you are now?
Sanders: ”Yes, I used to work in fine dining restaurants. I love it. I love the pomp and circumstance. Do not get wrong with me. I’ll put gold leaf and caviar on anything.
“And one day, I was working in this restaurant and they had been doing like a series of popups. They were bringing up all these like world-famous chefs in every single day there was a different chef, different menu.
“And I was leaving one night and the streets were flooded with people yelling, ‘I can’t breathe.’ It was a time when Eric Garner had been murdered, and they had decided that they weren’t gonna hold anybody accountable for that. And people who were protesting and literally screaming at the top of their lungs that they can’t breathe. And it took a second, I went back into the restaurant and it was guttural. And I was like, ‘Oh, I have to go do something else.’ I have a talent. I could make a decision in that moment. I could keep doing food in a way that is just ego-driven or I could turn and do something that I feel like was really gonna change the world on a human level, not just an ideation of pretty plates.”
Akunowicz: “ I’ve done every job that there is to do in a restaurant, and I was living in Boston and I was working as a cocktail waitress and I was working at Planned Parenthood, and I had to have two jobs because I couldn’t make ends meet otherwise.
“I was talking about going to grad school. I was applying to school to get my MSW, my master’s in social work. And my girlfriend at the time looked at me and said, ‘you know, I know like what you wanna do and you wanna help people, but you really only ever talk about what you would do someday if you owned your own restaurant.’
“I always say that was an aha moment, but it was also an oh s*** moment, right? I was like. Oh man, I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life. I have to be honest with myself. I’m not gonna have a real job. And I got really quiet. And I got really quiet for about two weeks because when I’m thinking about something, I’m an internal processor, not an external processor. And so thought about it, thought about it, and two weeks later I enrolled in culinary school.
Myint: ”It’s more recent than my resume reads. I didn’t feel really taken seriously when I was trying to pursue different projects in Nashville. And it took my parents’ passing, it took both of their deaths, for me to really hone in on healing.
“It was a place of discovery of my roots. I was just kind of this like the gay next door that can do everything. I can iron a linen, I can pick a wine list, I can decorate a restaurant, design great concepts, but like cooking my mother’s food and the flavors of my heritage really gave me my voice.
“So really, I feel like I’m in my prime in the last three years of my cooking career. My identity is clear, my vision is clear, and like my cooking is very, very signature.”
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Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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