Staff
at the restaurant. ‘There’s still this lingering notion that if I have
regular human contact with somebody with HIV, I may contract it.’
Photograph: Bensimon Byrne
For the first time, a restaurant where every piece of food is made by someone with HIV has opened in Toronto.
According to Guardian,
organizers say the impetus was a recent poll that found that the
thought of dining with somebody who’s HIV-positive still paralyzes them
with fear.
The survey by Casey House, Canada’s only hospital dedicated to
people living with HIV/AIDS, found that nearly half of Canadians
wouldn’t eat a meal prepared by someone with the disease, even though
health experts say the infection can’t be transmitted that way. To
combat the stigma around food prep, Casey House decided it was time to
pull a bold stunt.
The pop-up, called June’s Eatery after Casey House’s co-founder
June Callwood, launched this week. It advertised two four-course dinners
made by 14 HIV-positive chefs for $125 — one yesterday, the other
today. Both of them sold out.
Organizers told The Guardian that they even welcome “negative coverage,” though, as the “entire point of the pop-up” is “exposing the ignorance and blame around HIV and AIDS.”
They did their best to test people, too — organizers say they mailed
jars of soup prepared by the HIV-positive team to newsrooms “across Canada.” It seems they didn’t really care what became of that soup in a box, as long as it challenged media to “examine their own beliefs” before writing about the event.
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