The Oakland Museum of California has just opened its Queer California exhibition, set to run until August 11, and I came across an incredible and unexpected food story in a tucked-away, dark room. “Looking for Jiro Onuma,” a black-and-white video installation by artist Tina Takemoto, ponders what life must have been like for its titular character, a real-life gay Issei man who, along with the rest of the Japanese American community on the West Coast, was forced to live in an internment camp during World War II.

According to Takemoto’s research, Onuma worked in a mess hall at the Topaz camp in Utah; photos that he left behind, of his lover and friends, might be the only documentation of adult gay Issei life in the camps.

According to the placard on the wall, “This project tries to imagine how Jiro Onuma survived the isolation, boredom, humiliation, and heteronormativity of imprisonment as a dandy gay bachelor from San Francisco.” Takemoto packages Onuma’s tale in a performance worthy of any drag show, dancing with a broom and baking bread while vignettes of body builders and internment camp queues flash on-screen. Their version of Onuma folds towels and sifts flour, stonefaced, while hoping to be anywhere but Utah.

Kneading bread is such a meditative act, perhaps rivaled only by dishwashing. Takemoto is smart to center the performance on this, because who among us hasn’t daydreamed while massaging a ball of dough, waiting for the glutens to bind? Repetition defined life in the camps: reflected in the daily footsteps back and forth between hastily converted horse stable and mess hall; the dodgy loyalty tests imposed by a xenophobic government; and the constant stares of armed guards. Takemoto reminds us of all of that through the mindlessness of production baking.

Luckily, improbably, the performance resolves in a moment of catharsis that I hope you’ll go see on your own. You may leave wondering just how many of the world’s revolutions and uprisings have been imagined by someone working on ball of dough.

Best Song I Heard in a Restaurant

Just before dinner at Lazy Bear, as my group of diners milled around in the lofted space overlooking the dining room, I heard the telltale guitar riff from “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. The sound made me think of the smell of the woods and diesel, of long-past roadtrips to the Louisiana bayou in search of chanterelles. And of this thought experiment, which asks you to consider if Jolene might have been a cat.

Photo of the week

The Detroit-style pizza at Cellarmaker House of Pizza is all angles: Imagine the ideal, crusty edges of brownies, but with caramelized cheese baked onto a light, focaccia-like base.

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What I’m reading

• I am very excited about this new column by Rachel Levin on restaurant regulars, which is accompanied by illustrations by George McCalman. This week’s edition is on Terely and Fred Harrell, regulars at Jardiniere. Fred didn’t like the pomme puree on the short rib plate. “I told them: ‘It just doesn’t work,’’ Fred explained. “The potatoes turn too soupy.” Chef Traci Des Jardins later took it off the menu and started serving the short ribs with another setup. (“I don’t know, maybe it was because of me,” Fred ponders.)

• This story, on the illegal charcoal trade in Asia, is an in-depth look at the repercussions of the popularity of charcoal grilling in places like Thailand and Japan. The underground industry, estimated at $10 billion in 2018, is already depleting mangrove forests in Myanmar and exploiting a vulnerable population of Burmese workers.

• Finally, check out this beautiful series of stories about Puerto Rico’s foodways and how the island’s population is taking food sovereignty into their own hands. Puerto Ricans are working to define what the “future of food” means to them; this is a fascinating read.

Bite Curious is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle’s restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, delivered to inboxes on Monday mornings. Follow along on Twitter: @Hooleil