Whether they’re cooking in a restaurant kitchen, selling homemade cakes in West Philly Facebook groups to make rent, or cooking free meals for Philadelphians experiencing food insecurity, queer and trans cooks and chefs are supporting Philly’s food culture. They’re contributing to mutual aid and making their way in a food world that’s still very white, cis-gendered, and straight.
I spoke to Philly chefs and cooks queering the food scene about what’s shaped their work, how they’re carving out space for themselves, the role of community in their work, and what it’s like to be queer in food right now.
JOSH YEBOAH-GYASI
(THEY/THEM)
COMMUNITY COOK
Growing up with African immigrant parents, food was something that was always made at home. “And the food did slap,” Josh Yeboah-Gyasi says, laughing. “So I can’t even be mad.” That’s where cooking started for them: watching their mom make massive, traditional cultural meals and eating them together.
That’s all Yeboah-Gyasi was ever supposed to be: a recipient of food. Their gender socialization taught them that their job was not to cook, but to bring home money for other people to cook. When they started subverting their gender and gender performance, they started to cook for themself consistently.
Now, Yeboah-Gyasi makes vegan West African meals, like jollof rice and tomato stew, for food insecure people from their home.
“I find it deeply important to not only engage with people’s physical hunger, but the other parts of their being. The wholeness of who people are, their mind, body, and spirit,” they say. And if other people want to join in and help, cooking collaboratively is one of their favorite things. “More hands make the load lighter,” they say. “I’m always happy to engage with the capacity that community members share and work together to make filling, delicious dishes.”
Baking wedding cakes for queer people is one of Valentina D.F.’s favorite things. In a world where LGBTQ+ people have been discriminated against while trying to buy cakes for celebrations of their love, she’s glad to be someone people can feel good about buying a cake from.
VALENTINA D.F.
(SHE/HER)
VEGAN BAKER SELLING CAKES FROM HOME
Valentina D.F. went from waitress to sous chef to baker at a Paris café around eight years ago. When she returned home to Philadelphia, she started baking vegan cakes from her apartment, focusing on Pride-themed cakes for other queer and trans people, and selling them through her social media pages and queer Philly Facebook groups.
“I like making people happy with food,” she says. Her cakes focus on what she calls “trippy design” and lean into seasonality: strawberry basil for summer, chestnut for the fall, pistachio and raspberry lemon for spring.
Making Pride-themed cakes in particular is an important way for her to feel like part of her community. “I’m bi, but nobody in my family knows,” she says. “I really like doing the bisexual cakes because it’s like, ‘Yep, this is my cake; this is me.’”
Baking wedding cakes for queer people is one of her favorite things. In a world where LGBTQ+ people have been discriminated against while trying to buy cakes for celebrations of their love, she’s glad to be someone people can feel good about buying a cake from—not only someone who accepts them, but is one of them.
Top: Sydney Rae Chin (they/them)
Middle: Adrien Carnecchia (he/they)
Bottom: Cyán L. Axúl-Sól Sankofa, also known as Chef Blu (he/him)
SYDNEY RAE CHIN AND ADRIEN CARNECCHIA PHOTOS BY GAB BONGHI. CHEF BLU PHOTOS BY JORDAN HARRIS.
SYDNEY RAE CHIN
(THEY/THEM)
FREELANCE PRIVATE CHEF AND RESTAURANT PREP COOK
Community brought Sydney Rae Chin to the kitchen and it’s what continues to sustain them, whether they’re cooking for private clients or prepping salads in the kitchen of a fine-dining restaurant. “My parents’ and grandparents’ generations don’t necessarily say ‘I love you,’but they show you in food,” says Chin, who grew up going to their grandparents’ Chinatown restaurants.
Chin sees food and politics as one, and elevating Asian American food is an important way of honoring their ancestors. “People often see Chinese food as cheap, because Chinese people had to survive,” they say, citing the Chinese Exclusion Act that left food as one of the few routes of employment available to their ancestors.
“I’m third generation, and food doesn’t have to be for survival anymore. It can be for fun, play, pleasure, and paying yourself what the product is actually worth.”
Play comes in the form of leaning into the interactive elements of some traditional Chinese dishes and experimenting with flavor profiles. It feels distinctly queer, in the way that embodying one’s queerness can be a shedding of restrictive “shoulds” into what actually feels good.
ADRIEN CARNECCHIA
(HE/THEY)
KITCHEN MANAGER AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR AT DOUBLE TRELLIS FOOD INITIATIVE
Adrien Carnecchia loves the process of making food, of working with his hands. “You put all of your love into it and hope that the person who eats it enjoys it as much as you enjoy making it for them,” he says. At Double Trellis, which makes about 1,000 “dignified meals” a week for folks experiencing food insecurity, that’s where the emphasis is: making meals to nourish people both physically and emotionally. It’s a space that has nourished Carnecchia, too: in Double Trellis’ kitchen, the majority of the staff are queer. “Being queer is very normal here,” Carnecchia says.
“You’re just accepted for who you are and the skills you bring to the table. That’s what matters.”
As much as Carnecchia loves cooking and giving away meals, they see it as a stop gap. “It helps people in the moment. But we need to try to address some of the root issues of food insecurity and one of them is the barriers folks face to employment,” they say.
That’s why he’s spearheading a new workforce development program, where young people come to the kitchen to learn everything from food safety to cooking methods to knife skills. Later, Carnecchia and his team will help the students find jobs in kitchens.
CYÁN L. AXÚL-SÓL SANKOFA, ALSO KNOWN AS CHEF BLU
(HE/HIM)
CHEF WORKING WITH THE FREE BRUNCH PROGRAM
The first thing Cyán L. Axúl-Sól Sankofa ever cooked was a pancake— and it was also the first word he ever said aloud. It’s fitting that now, as he lays the groundwork for his own mobile food business, he works with the Free Brunch program in West Philly.
“It’s removing the classist aspect of brunch, where brunch is something only certain people have access to,” says Sankofa. “It’s also taking the model from the Black Panthers’ free breakfast program.” A recent brunch involved a sweeping spread of everything from brisket and mac’n’cheese to masala chicken wings and sweet potato ice cream. Sankofa, an anti-capitalist, believes everyone has a right to life’s luxuries.
He sees cooking as an art form and a way to both express himself and have fun with the everyday things in front of him. For him, being queer is an advantage in the kitchen.
“There are ways that queer people have to maneuver and live in the world that are unconventional and creative and explosive. Kitchens are often a masculine space where you can’t allow yourself to be afraid,” he says, adding that we all have fear, we’re human. “But queerness is a space where being fearless is praised as a strength, something inherently given and passed down to us.”
Top: Joy Parham (she/her)
Bottom: Khyania Adams (she/they)
JOY PARHAM PHOTOS BY GAB BONGHI. KHYANIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY JORDAN HARRIS.
JOY PARHAM
(SHE/HER)
CHEF AND EDUCATOR
Joy Parham first connected with food through television—an experience that came full circle when she became a contestant on “Hell’s Kitchen.” As much as she loves to cook, the intersection of education and social justice is where the Philly-born-and- raised chef spends most of her time in food now. On culinary advisory committees around the city, as a chef in the 2024 James Beard Foundation Policy and Change Boot Camp, and as a culinary and hospitality instructor at the Community College of Philadelphia, she gets to help with the future of the industry, including the queer future of the industry.
“Don’t you know all the gays are creative, honey? Welcome to the family,” she told an adult student who nervously confessed after class that she was bisexual.
That’s Parham’s favorite part of her work as an educator: encouraging young people and people transitioning to different careers to be whoever they want to be. “That’s what I tell them all the time: ‘You do you, the right people are gonna come to you. Mind your business and make your money.’”
KHYANIA ADAMS
(SHE/THEY)
PRIVATE CHEF AND FOUNDER OF ROOTEDSOLE
Khyania Adams loved working in kitchens. The pace of it. Being creative. Working with their hands. Juggling everything. But as a queer Black woman, they didn’t always see themself in those spaces.
Now, through RootedSole, they work to make a safe space for queer people to express themselves through food. They love making what they call “glorified mom meals”: meals that are comforting but also bring back memories—especially for queer people, many of whom may have strained relationships with their families because of who they are.
“I like to cook off of memory, off of a feeling. If I’m eating something I want to be transported back to a moment in time,” the West Philadelphia native says. “I love to make meals that are remnants of when we were growing up, sitting at the dinner table at Grandma’s house, but making it accessible.”
As for being queer in the food industry? The dynamics are changing a little, she acknowledges. There are more women in powerful positions; there are more queer people.
“But there are still the same old things happening, too. You have to be the changing force in the space. And if you can’t be, that’s OK, because someone’s gonna come behind you who’s going to make sure things change.”
Many of the chefs I spoke with shared their excitement about using local, sustainable ingredients. They spoke about the ways that stepping into one’s queerness opens doors of imagination and creativity that can spill into everything else, including their culinary work. They spoke of a queer community that takes care of each other in different ways, from making food for mutual aid to supporting young queer people in the industry.
They spoke of hope: that people can have enough to eat, and be nourished by that food. That kitchens can become more welcoming spaces for people who look like them. And that here, in this city so many of us love, food can be more than food: a time capsule, a way to play, a healing force, a love letter.
