A Chef Fights Back
Jesse Daniel Phillips recalls the moment he came up with the name Booch Queen for his new line of fermented foods. He was lying on the living room floor with a big glass of wine, asking his plants for inspiration.
“It sounds totally crazy, but I have a lot of plants, and I like talking to them,” Phillips says. “So I was like, what do you guys think? What can you tell me, fiddle fig?”
The name Booch Queen came to him and he instantly knew it was representative of what he wanted to do with his new endeavour.
“I’m a gay man who also kind of identities as a butch queen, so I knew that was it,” Phillips says. Less than a year later, he released his line of fermented foods, including cold-flavoured kombucha, hot sauce, kimchi and vinegar. The lineup features unique flavours such as banana, strawberry and mango kombucha, hibiscus rose cranberry vinegar and fire cider.
He wanted the look and feel of Booch Queen to stand out from the more “granola’ competition, so he tapped into his love of old Hollywood glamour and drag culture by featuring different coloured lips in all his products. Some even have braces.
"I’ve just always loved that fabulous hyper-feminine kind of look, and I think that's where the lips came from,” Phillips says. “I wanted it to be playful, circus and kind of silly.”
Phillips first started making fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut and kombucha years ago, after years of living with chronic gut pain. “I have suffered with [inflammatory bowel disease] symptoms my whole life,” Phillips says. “I saw different specialists and had cameras put in me and ultrasounds. I did a two-year elimination diet and tried all the different types of diets and medications and nothing worked. I was just in pain all the time.”
It got to the point where he couldn’t eat foods such as raw fruit and vegetables or coffee. He was told to avoid fermented products, but as a chef, Phillips knew that fermented foods were rich in probiotics that could help him heal.
“That just never made sense to me so I would eat it,” Phillips says. “Now I don't have symptoms anymore. I can have coffee, spinach and raw vegetables. It's just really changed my life.”
Phillips’ journey to becoming a fermented foodpreneur is anything but linear. For years, he worked as a chef in hotels and restaurants such as the Pan Pacific and Milestones. Around the same time he began to struggle with an all-consuming drug addiction and lived on the streets of the Downtown Eastside.
His fortune changed when he was arrested for shoplifting sunglasses. “I got arrested again for shoplifting a pair of sunglasses, and that's when I went to court,” Phillips says. “The judge sort of threw her hands up and said, ‘What are we going to do with you, Mr. Phillips?’ Because I just kept getting caught. I said all I needed was a ride to the treatment centre.”
Phillips got that ride, and three months became 15 months in treatment. At this point, he’s been clean for 15 years. He found work in the film industry as a set decorator, but spends his days as a maintenance co-ordinator on a 100-foot yacht, and this is his first foray back into the food industry in years.
“It is nice to be back in the kitchen,” Phillips says. “I’ve got my knives, and I've got all this cool equipment and I play music. It feels like a full circle. I've kind of come back to my original passion, which is making really healthy, nourishing food.” Phillips is doing the Vancouver farmers’ market circuit and selling Booch Queen at small retailers such as Mah Milk Bar.
Booch Queen
boochqueen.com | 778.899.1113 | @booch_queen
