‘What is Queer Food?’ – Writer John Birdsall cooks up literary deliciousness

“What is queer food?” is a question that’s itched at John Birdsall’s mind since the mid-1980s. Back then, Birdsall, a Bay Area native, was in the midst of a series of line cook jobs in restaurant kitchens, some of which would come to be regarded as paragons of the California culinary revolution: Greens, Hayes Street Grill, Chez Panisse. He even did a stint at the San Francisco Zen Center.

“What Is Queer Food? How We Served A Revolution,” Birdsall’s poetic, factoid-packed new book, finds him scratching, soothing, and intensifying that itch with remarkable, genre-defying results.

A gay man who came of age in the AIDS era, Birdsall has stirred together a passion for food, keen research skills, and bravura talent for psychological and sociological interpretation into a delicious literary dis