James Beard: America’s Great, Gay Cook
How and why does it matter that James Beard, one of the instrumental figures in the development of our country’s food culture, of American cuisine, and our sense of its distinctiveness, was gay? That was the question raised by John Birdsall, food writer and former restaurant cook, on Thursday October 5 at the Leitner House in Pierson College for tea (and brioche en surprise) as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism.
Birdsall is working on a biography of Beard, one that he said will not shy away from discussing the large role played by sexuality in the great cook’s life, a fault committed by Beard’s past biographers. According to Birdsall, some of this relates to homophobia both in the country and in the food world. “Beard is being castrated. We don’t want him to be sexual,” Birdsall said of how Beard is usually remembered.
It is indisputable that sexuality was a complicated part of Beard’s life, but Birdsall’s talk went further than that. What does it mean that Beard and Craig Claiborne, another pivotal figure in American food, were homosexual? How does queerness factor into the food itself? Can food be gay?
Near the end of the tea, Birdsall recounted the story of Beard’s famous onion sandwiches. Beard mentioned a number of times that it was inspired by the hors d’ouevres of a famous French hostess, and Birdsall speculatively identifies this hostess as the owner of a high-end brothel in Paris. “It shows his sense of adventure, taking something and wrapping his personality around it,” he said.
Birdsall also spoke about the strange life of queerness within the food world, calling “ironic” the fact that, in the 1980s, a homophobic and male restaurant culture in America sprung from a cuisine whose originators — Beard, Clayborne, Julia Child — were gay or female. “It’s a difficult tradition,” Birdsall concluded.
