Who the Hell is Gabrielle Bakes?

Excited to meet you all (!), what to expect and other thoughts.

Taken in my mother’s kitchen in 96’

Before I dive in, thank you for being here. Your support means so much. My inbox is open to your feedback or other exciting and thoughtful discussions.

As a food writer, namely, a queer food writer, I want deeper insights, intricate storytelling, and factual narratives. I’m very interested in independent food media and how it serves us over “Big Pubs,” which may be censored on what they can and cannot say.

And.. to be transparent, I didn’t really plan on writing a newsletter. My handle @gabriellebakes started as a joke between my friends since I, you guessed it, bake—mostly my grandmother’s recipes and sweet treats for my family, friends, and those who need them the most. Or, of course, for any celebration or stressful situation. I wrote my fair share of essays in college and grad school and dreaded them, probably because I thought I wasn’t great at it. But, later on, I took on a few roles where I’d copyedit, and eventually, I found enough courage to write and publish. That being said, my voice is still developing. More recently, I took Alicia Kennedy’s workshop, and something clicked. So here we are: Gabrielle Bakes will be my first personal newsletter.

I started my career working in food at a McDonald's during my teenage years. I did a few stints as a waitress. And when I was in college studying food science, I worked at Chipotle. I later became a senior lab technician at Penn State Sensory Lab, where “my compound of interest” (lol) was capsaicin. The sensory lab was one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever worked at; we’d product tested a variety of “new-to-market” products from “big brands” with consumer groups (think: impossible burgers, cheese levels on crackers, etc.)—and I got to keep the samples. We did a lot of other science-y stuff, too, with data, but eating the products and R&D-ing recipes were always my favorite.

As my time in college was ending, I panicked at the prospect of deciding right then and there if I wanted to get my doctorate and work in academia. I also had a life-changing event, which is a story for another time. Needless to say, I was lost. I applied to NYU and got into their Food Studies masters program, which I completed at night while working full-time at a market research firm, doing qualitative and quantitative research for CPG brands. Maybe some of you can relate, but it’s actually quite interesting (wonderful? refreshing?) to think about how my younger self was so naive yet so ambitious.

Food studies turned out to be precisely the discourse I needed. I felt like I had been awakened from this fever dream of technical food and brought back to life by the community, social, and political aspects of food, which often get overlooked in food science and swept under the rug in mainstream food media (this was 2016!).

At this point, I was a rambunctious young adult who, albeit a bit depressed, thought I could take on the world and started to get involved in the queer food landscape. I researched and bought every book on queer food (hint: there were few and far between). My thesis was about the lack of representation in food media for LGBTQA+ folks and how to build queer community around food. I attended community events, like Queer Soup Night, and shuttered ones Babetown and Jaynes Beard Supper Club. I even ended up hosting some queer culinary events with friends through an earlier venture. Later, with a handful of other queer folks, I co-founded Queer Food Foundation.

Last April, I presented my independent research with my dear colleagues and friends from NYU, Ashley Scheideberg and Javonne Alonzo, on a Queer Food Curriculum at Boston University for the Queer Food Conference. The 3 of us, plus my life and business partner, Alex, started Pantry Magazine through the development of Pantry Collective, which centers LGBTQA+ and intersectional identities within food system discourse and an academic lens.

Between now and then, I worked a handful of marketing roles with food brands and non-profits, which led me to this point. I’ve supported newly opened and shuttered restaurants (RIP Nossa!) and worked on minority-owned CPG brands.

That’s all to say that my hope for this newsletter is to create a space where people can connect through, over, and with food. Cooking may be the medium for some—while reading about food or discussing food over a meal might be for others. Any way you digest it, I hope you realize what food can do.

What can you expect? Monthly! Newsletter! Drops! If you’re interested in food studies, queer food anthropology, food theory, gender, sexuality and food, learning about the CPG world, restaurants, baking and pastry, and overall stories on food and community, this might be for you! Honestly, I appreciate your patience as I figure out what resonates best with both my voice, and all of you. Most of all, as the title suggests, there will be stories about recipes that shape us: essays on food, baking, and community.

While the plan was to post regularly on Instagram under @GabrielleBakes, exploring all things related to home baking and cooking and, of course, the matriarchal connection between my mother, my grandmother, and her mother (my great-grandmother), I might consider breaking up with meta to try other social platforms in the meantime. We will find out together.

Things I’ve been into in no particular order: reading The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024, submitting an abstract to ASFS | AFHVS 2025 with my Pantry Mag colleagues on creating an academic queer food collective, pitching Feminist Food Journal on the complexities of grief + celebration, spent time in Las Vegas at Fancy Food West with Vanessa of Queer Food Foundation, and I’ve been baking as much as possible (a LARGE FORM apple cinnamon poptart from scratch) to hopefully fight off seasonal depression and the pure chaos of the world. I’ve also pre-ordered some of the NEW queer food books: What is Queer Food by J. Birdsall and Queers at the Table by M. Elias & Dr. A. Ketchum.

Lastly, and most importantly, there are a handful of people who have inspired this newsletter and the way in which I explore the world, and while I don’t have the space or time to name them all, there are a few top-of-mind: Alicia Kennedy, Nicola Lamb, Vanessa Parish, Natasha Pickowicz, Abena Anim-Somuah, Jenny Dorsey, Bronwenn Wyatt, Leo Kirts, Annie Cheng, Samin Nosrat, and Paola Velez. Thank you. Please consider supporting their work.

In community,
Gab