Stirring the Pot: MacKenzie Chung Fegan’s Take on Queer Food Culture

By David Landis, The Gay Gourmet–

There were big shoes to fill when the San Francisco Chronicle hired a new restaurant critic in 2014. But what a breath of fresh air when MacKenzie Chung Fegan took the reins. Her first review, of the stalwart San Francisco classic Zuni Café, made waves for its honesty, candidness, and forthrightness. She carved out her own voice, and humor permeates much of her writing about food. Plus, she makes “news you can use” accessible. But who knew that she was queer? Once The Gay Gourmet found this out, I wanted to learn more. So, over a lunch at Fable in the Castro and a personal 1-1 interview, I had a chance to get to know this clever, funny, and talented reporter a bit better. She offers some fascinating insights about queer representation in food media, as well as her own personal journalistic journey as a queer reporter and restaurant industry insider. (This article has been edited for length and clarity.)

David Landis: You’re a leading food reviewer and critic, and you’re queer, which is important to our newspaper’s readers. It’s a pleasure talking with you.

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: Of course, thanks for asking me!

David Landis: Walk me through your journey from hospitality to journalism.

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I come from a restaurant family. My grandparents opened Henry’s Hunan—the only Hunanese restaurant in the city at the time. Chinese food in San Francisco was largely American Chinese or Cantonese-inflected, so it was unusual to have this different region represented. I spent childhood Saturdays at the restaurant, making Shirley Temples, and helping seat people. I waited tables in college but never saw a career in the restaurant industry. I then worked in documentary film for many years. Then I transitioned to food writing accidentally. I was producing a documentary in Alaska, living on a boat without electricity or running water. The only wi-fi was at a gin distillery. At summer’s end, I wrote a story about them making gin with local Alaskan botanicals and placed it in Playboy. From there, I started doing more writing, eventually shifting from documentaries to food writing, then went to Bon Appetit, and then the Chronicle.

David Landis: What’s your family life like?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I use the word queer, and my spouse, Mars, is non-binary and uses she or they pronouns. I tend to use spouse instead of wife because it feels better for her. (We have a two-year-old) and I am 4 months pregnant, so our family is growing!

David Landis: Congratulations! That’s fantastic news.

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: We’re so excited. As queer people, we weren’t sure this was in the cards for us. My spouse comes from a large family. I’m pregnant with her parents’ 20th grandchild. We love being parents, and our 2-year-old keeps us on our toes. It’s tough doing the (critic) job while pregnant with a young child, but we live in a duplex with my mom, (who helps out).

David Landis: Does Mars work in hospitality also?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: Mars is in a career transition, but Mars is actually an ex-gay pornographer. She has made content that your viewers are very familiar with.

David Landis: Are there many queer reporters covering food?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I will tell you there’s actually a lot of us. Bill Addison at the Los Angeles Times is gay, and Tom Sietsema at The Washington Post is gay. At the Chronicle, from Michael Bauer to Soleil Ho, to me, there hasn’t been a straight critic in this house for a while. Except for Cesar Hernandez. If you expand beyond newspapers, like Elazar Sontag at Bon Appetit—there’s actually a ton of queer people in food media, and I don’t think it’s a mistake. The style section, the food section—there are a lot of LGBTQ writers and editors in food media.

David Landis: Does being queer inform your writing?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I think being queer does inform my writing. Most critics write in first person from a personal place. Food criticism is subjective. Critics bring their full selves to it—racial and ethnic backgrounds, where they grew up, their sexuality, and their gender identity. I don’t see how I could compartmentalize different parts of that. When I go to a restaurant, I’m looking at the whole experience. Who I am as a person informs that.

David Landis: You became the Chronicle’s critic in 2014, and the next year got the James Beard Award for Emerging Voice. Was that affirming?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I was so surprised and honored. Starting this job was intimidating. I hadn’t been a critic before. Now you are out there as “The Critic.” I certainly had hang-ups about, “Can I do this? Am I the right person for this job?” It felt really great to receive that validation.

David Landis: I love your sense of humor. In fact, sometimes when I read your writing, I’ll laugh out loud. What role does humor play in food writing?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I think food is joyous. Going to a restaurant should be a fun experience. It still is for me, and I eat out all the time. I hope to capture some of that joy and fun in my writing. Of course, food is also political, food is serious, and food is people’s livelihoods, but it’s part of who I am. If I’m writing from a personal place, I want it to feel like my voice.

David Landis: Let’s talk about Chef Thomas Keller and your French Laundry incident. He recognized you, and asked you to leave because of a negative review by your predecessor. That story went viral. Why did you write about it?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I really did not intend to write about The French Laundry. I was there in a work capacity, but not to review it. (After he asked me to depart) one of my guests said, “I guess you have to write about this.” My stomach just dropped. (I thought) I am part of the news. I was dreading it. How do I write about this thing I’m still processing in real time? I give much credit to my editors. We worked on that piece for a long time. They gave me time and space to find the right approach, because I didn’t want to be proscriptive. I wanted to lay out what happened, and allow readers to arrive at their own conclusions. Could Chef Keller have handled it differently? Of course. We all have bad nights. I don’t know what was going on for him that night. We haven’t talked since.

David Landis: What trends are you seeing in restaurants?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: There’s been an explosion in new French restaurants. We added five new French restaurants to the Chronicle’s top list over the last year. I think it’s like hemlines—a return to tradition in unstable times. People aren’t looking for molecular gastronomy when the culture feels destabilized. I’m also seeing the rebound of San Francisco. There were real concerns from restaurateurs about investing in the city. But we are headed in the right direction. We had so many amazing openings last year, and we’re getting national recognition from food media.

David Landis: Do you think we’re seeing more queer chefs and restaurateurs?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I think so. There’s always been the hierarchical French brigade system that is militaristic, and the chefs you associate with that are by and large straight white men. But kitchens have always been a welcoming place to misfits, or people who’ve been othered. Also, it’s generational. More Gen Z is identifying as queer than any generation before them. By virtue of who the torch is being passed to, we’ll see more people who identify as LGBT helming kitchens and owning restaurants.

David Landis: Favorite place to hang out in the Castro?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: I’m really into Rikki’s sports bar. I was there for a Valkyries game. There was a central table occupied by maybe 10 women in their 60s to 80s—walkers, hearing aids, all swagged out in Valkyries gear. Then half an hour later, an entire gay softball team walked in full of 20-somethings. Where else do you find a place that covers this spectrum of the queer community? I’ll shout out one other queer bar with a queer chef—Friends and Family in Oakland. They do a lot of community events as well, like Queer Speed Dating. They have a very old-school corkboard where you can put up a personal ad, or do a missed connections for somebody you might have spotted at the bar. And the chef, Gaby Maeda, used to be at State Bird Provisions. It’s a bar, but the food that they are turning out of this tiny kitchen is so incredible, because they have a truly world-class chef back there.

David Landis: Best family-friendly restaurant?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: Hilda and Jesse for brunch, potentially. It’s queer-owned. They don’t know this, but when I was trying to get pregnant this time, we did IVF. One time I had to give myself a shot right in the middle of a dinner reservation there. I disappeared into their bathroom for a weirdly long time. I gave myself a shot of hormones, thinking, this probably isn’t the first time somebody’s given themselves a hormone shot in the bathroom at Hilda and Jesse in service of queer family building.

David Landis: Anything else that you›re working on?

MacKenzie Chung Fegan: Yes, I will say that the Chronicle is about to release a list of our top 25 wine country restaurants in Sonoma and Napa counties. We’re going to be doing an event at the Culinary Institute of America’s campus. Some of the restaurants on the list will be cooking. We’re also doing it in collaboration with our wine team. So, Esther Mobley and Jess Lander put together a list of the top wineries, and they’ll be pouring. The chefs will be there, and I think that will be a very fun day for people who want to get up to wine country.

David Landis, aka “The Gay Gourmet,” is a foodie, a freelance writer, and a retired PR maven. You can email him at: davidlandissf@gmail.com Or visit him online at: www.gaygourmetsf.com

The Gay Gourmet
Published on September 11, 2025