America's restaurant trend comes to Germany – and sparks criticism: “too expensive”

Quirky cookbooks, cooking shows and restaurants – America's trend is spreading to us. A sales strategy or an opportunity for greater tolerance?

A new trend is slowly gaining momentum in Germany – in America there are already the first restaurants that are completely dedicated to exotic food and exotic food. What should it be? While this has been heatedly debated for months, the task of finding a definition is far from over.

Do you believe it? Gossip in the queer communityThe first officially queer restaurants are already in the works in Germany. These already exist in the US, primarily in the eccentric strongholds of Los Angeles and New York. The first queer food conference took place at Boston University this summer.

Julia Calder has researched this topic extensively and published a cookbook on it. The idea came to her during her transition. The trans* woman was inspired by a phrase: “The more colorful the salad, the healthier it is,” she says. BuzzFeed News Germany from IPPPEN.MEDIA. In her understanding, diversity is enriching in many life situations, which is why this statement plays an important role in the context of queer food for her.

Criticism of the weird food trend: “It has a lot to do with marketing”

Strange food has something to do with it An understanding of the diverse queer community Do, Calder says. She adds: “Is a food automatically queer just because I cook it or because my kitchen is LGBTIQ*-friendly? I don't think so. For me it's about the internal approach to making a dish.”

In the queer culinary community in America, the focus is on communal meals among queer people—this aspect alone can turn a meeting of queer friends at a restaurant into a queer meal. Samuel B. Owner of a gay bar Munich – He sees the situation a bit differently: “I think it has a lot to do with marketing. To put it bluntly, it's probably the latest attempt to offer food to deceive people at inflated prices. The definition can be very difficult, because even the word 'queer' can't be clearly defined,” he says. tells BuzzFeed News Germany.

Gay artist Thomas Partling made headlines in 2022 at the Theatermuseum Dusseldorf with his queer cooking show – in which he revives the cult cooking show “Alfredissimo” in a strange setting. The goal was to make the weird normal. “Queer food makes sense because I can clearly associate certain music, fashion or movies with the queer community. For me to belong to the queer food label, some kind of tasteful, innovative, aesthetic identity is important,” asserts Bartling. BuzzFeed News Germany.

Food trends can create community acceptance of queerness

Calder strongly believes that queer food has an important message, especially for the queer community – and in addition to the unifying aspect, queer restaurants can also create a new safe space. “I see queer food as a vehicle for creating visibility in the context of society as a whole. So far, many initiatives have been mostly about tolerance. But isn't acceptance what we're striving for? For me, tolerance is a first step in this direction.

Gender University professor Alex Ketch, an American pioneer of the queer food trend, asserts something similar—in addition to appreciation, it's also a recognition of the queer history of the past decades. As an example, he cites a campaign from the 1980s in which brownies laced with cannabis were baked for starving AIDS patients. Plus, it's important to include people on the fringes of society in the queer community—which gives queer food a very political flavor.

One question remains: Can queer people also cook better? Bartling says: “Cultural and indigenous skills like cooking have traditionally been attributed mostly to gay people. However, I saw the opposite on my queer cooking show: very few guests could cook well. Regardless of whether it was a gay politician, a queer performer or a drag queen, most of the dishes were pretentious.” .