Inside Ludwig Hurtado's Queer DIY Cookbook Zine

Hurtado himself is a seasoned journalist — food pun intended — and documentary filmmaker, alongside Lewis and Hamilton, both food media veterans themselves. In the zine’s forward, the three muse on the state of food media: “What about a queer food culture that was playful, explorative, and messy? A queerness that splats onto the walls and stains our clothes with its abundance?” The zine was born out of that need to bring the conversation into the present, and push it further, to a place where food can provide “an expansive form of nourishment for our bodies, spirits, and dreams of a more liberated future.”

Hurtado also has a book on the way, called Bad Foodies, the next step in a career long focused on food and people’s relationship to it. When asked how that became a pillar of his work, Hurtdao says: “At risk of sounding like cliche mango diaspora poetry, I will say that growing up in a family of Latino immigrants in LA, food was often my first window into the worlds my parents and grandparents came from. Food frequently served as my gateway to exploring different cultures beyond our own, too.”

In the letter from you and your collaborators, you talk about these “interventions,” straight media attempts to make into queerness and food during Pride season. What lessons around resisting that carried into PLAY and how it came together?

Over the years, I saw more and more empty gestures from the media and companies distinguishing themselves as pro-LGBTQ while only engaging with us in shallow, usually fleeting ways. Don't get me wrong – I don’t have an issue with recognition of people in our community who are making stuff happen. I think representation does matter, and I love celebrating those who are accomplishing great things in spite of their circumstances. That being said, there’s not much attention, even during that moment of increased visibility, paid to members of our community who are struggling, who aren’t being asked to be at a glamorous seated dinner or be in a fashion campaign. I’m thinking of those who need help putting meals on the table while we’re out at corporate sponsored events with open bars and hors d'oeuvres.

Being around the food, fashion and media spaces for quite some time now, though, I know that you won’t get very far by complaining about misappropriated resources. You have to offer an alternative, and ideally it’s something equally tangible and fun. Through this project and, honestly, through a lot of the work I do, I really see myself as a funnel. Let me funnel ideas and content to you, the audience, and in exchange I'll funnel your funds and attention to people and places that need it.

It’s also inspired by things like ACT UP’s protests of the FDA and Get Fat, Don’t Die. How did these things shape what the project became?

As a journalist and documentary filmmaker, I’ve covered some of the saddest and bleakest aspects of contemporary society. Always, my goal is to bring awareness to difficult issues, with the hope that folks might be motivated to do something about them. As queer people, most of us don’t need a constant reminder that we live on the margins and that many in our extended community aren’t able to live freely and safely. I wanted to make something that was geared toward mutual aid and addressed the struggles we face without making something depressing. That cooking column from ACT UP set the tone perfectly by nodding at the urgency of the AIDS epidemic of the time but doing so with levity.

For the most part, PLAY, the cookbook zine, is a collection of recipes. It doesn’t try to remind you constantly that it’s a charity project or that people elsewhere are hungry. We’re addressing that through our donations to organizations who are doing the work at a grassroots level. All you have to do is buy a copy, flip through its pages, and have a good time.

On that note: this book was made by queer people. All of the chefs and artists are LGBTQ. But it’s for everyone! Straight people can and should buy it!

The design of the magazine is incredibly graphic, and playful, like the mantras you set out in that editor’s letter. What inspired the look, and feel?

I’ve been painting a lot recently and a lot of my paintings reference urban signage. There are some graphics in the zine that are ripped straight from bodegas in my neighborhood. I’ve also always been super interested in the design of rave flyers, especially from the ‘90s. So, my designs in the zine borrowed a lot from that rave flyer imagery, hopefully with the effect of making you feel like you’re being invited to a party.

We wanted this to feel less like a cookbook and more like a queer DIY zine, and I think we were successful in doing that. I wanted to avoid any design conventions that you might find in typical cookbooks. Although I’ll admit, left to my own devices, the zine would have been more chaotic and a lot less readable. With the help of our designer Emma and our Creative Director, Gabriella, my mad-designer intuitions were kept at bay and we found a really fun middle ground.

You have quite the lineup of chefs involved in the project. Are there any recipes you feel particularly proud of, or a special connection to?

There are so many folks in there who I admire. And there were so many artists and chefs who couldn’t make it into the first zine simply due to time and space constraints.

I’ve been a fan of Silver Iocovozzi’s work for a while now, and can’t wait to make a trip back to his spot, Neng’s Jr, which is North Carolina's first Filipinx restaurant. I think what he’s doing both on and off the plate is so special and is what the restaurant industry needs more of. Funnily enough, though, his contribution to the zine, in true keeping with that DIY punk spirit, is neither a recipe nor an essay. It’s this lawless collage of scans of notes he took while conceiving of and opening Neng’s. You almost can’t make out any one note, but together they give you a meaningful glimpse of the tedious and brain-exploding process it must be to open a restaurant.

I’m no stranger to a big complicated recipe, but I’ll be honest, the recipe I do find myself actually making more than any of the others is Julia Turshen’s simple and delicious Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes. The perfect thing for a weekend morning spent with chosen family.

Your first book was also recently announced. Congrats! What drew you to exploring our relationships to food — what it can be, who eats what, the challenges people face around it — in your career?

Thank you! At risk of sounding like cliche mango diaspora poetry, I will say that growing up in a family of Latino immigrants in LA, food was often my first window into the worlds my parents and grandparents came from. Food frequently served as my gateway to exploring different cultures beyond our own, too.

I think all of my work is concerned with showing how connected our lives are to each other and to a broader system that’s greater than us. Whether it’s a magazine profile of a musician or an essay about memes, I’m usually attempting to show how the things we consume — the seemingly small things in our lives — reveal something larger about the world we live in.

The research I’ve been doing has been really fascinating and eye-opening. They say there’s “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” right? Food is this thing we consume every single day. There’s so much to explore there.

There’s a dinner series in the works, planned for after the zine is published. What can you tease about these experiences, and the artists/chefs you’ll collaborate with?

We titled the project “PLAY” because we wanted to encourage the idea that it’s okay, actually, to play with your food: to break rules. We’re continuing that ethos by bringing playfulness and creativity to the table. People who come to our dinners can expect not only a fun and exciting meal but also provocative performance art and other immersive experiences. For our first dinner, we’re partnering with OCDChinatown, a gallery in New York City that’s focused on championing queer art in every medium. Together we’re partnering with some amazing chefs and amazing artists to make something unforgettable.

You mentioned that profits will go towards mutual aid organizations that address food and housing insecurity. How do you see these things tying into the overall mission/hope for PLAY?

The goal of this project has always been to make something beautiful and fun that can also serve as a way to channel resources toward organizations that can use them to make a meaningful impact. Proceeds from this first zine are going to Intransitive and The Okra Project. Both are organizations that are working to directly address the needs of queer and trans people in need.

We’ve made something beautiful and fun, but what we’re most grateful for is the ability to help those in need, and the community we've built in trying to do so.

Photography: Joe Caster