The Art of Gay Cooking: A Culinary Memoir

by Daniel Isengart, Jeremiah Tower (Foreword)

For Daniel Isengart, home cooking has always been an essential part of living a creative life. A cabaret performer and sought-after private chef in New York City, he knows how to deliver one delectable meal after another with the ease of a seasoned entertainer. The Art of Gay Cooking is a witty literary portrait that takes the reader from the author's grandmother's kitchen in southern Germany to his formative childhood years in Paris, from the attic apartment in Brooklyn Heights where he lives with his husband to his clients' posh homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Alternating intimate anecdotes and wry observations about the culinary world with over 250 easy-to-follow recipes, the book explores a rich, gay life devoted to beauty and art where the home kitchen always takes center stage. Jeremiah Tower, the eminent Godfather of modern American cooking, adds words of wisdom in his candid Foreword that describes how Isengart’s inspired approach to cooking brought back memories of his own beginnings as the original chef of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Cleverly composed as an homage to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, The Art of Gay Cooking adheres closely to Toklas's idiosyncratic style, mirroring specific passages and echoing her amusingly eccentric tone. A chapter devoted to recipes from friends presents a poignant contrast to the limelight on celebrity chefs and restaurant food, proving that, at least in Isengart’s lively social circle of individualists, sophisticated yet unpretentious home-cooking is not a lost art.

Genres: Food

330 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2018

Reviews

[Dan]

This book came to my attention when Jeremiah Tower, who wrote the forward to it, posted about it. Now, I wasn’t at all sure what defined “gay cooking”, and by the end of the book I was no more enlightened. As best I could and can tell, the author more or less defines it as any cooking done by someone who is gay. How that makes it different from any other cooking, I couldn’t, and he apparently couldn’t, say. Having worked in the industry for many years, one of the things that those of us who are members of the LGBTQIA+ (did I miss any letters for the current iteration?) community have pushed for is the recognition that there IS NO difference. I spent months at an internship in my early days hearing “vegetables in the kitchen, fruits in the dining room” from the head chef.

Ostensibly, the book is a witty reinterpretation of the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. I don’t know why it needed reinterpretation, and let’s say that the author’s self-assessment of his wit is vastly overblown. Mostly he came across as a caricature of a self-absorbed kitchen diva, and he’s not shy about touting his own talents.

[Anne Green]

As another reviewer commented, there was nothing in here to differentiate between gay cooking and heterosexual cooking. I don't think that was the point though. Rather witty takeoff of the Alice B. Toklas cookbook, with interesting insights into the author's experiences working as a private chef for wealthy clients in New York and the Hamptons.