Gail Simmons on the Dinner Table as a Safe Space

For celebrated culinary expert and Top Chef judge Gail Simmons, the dinner table has never been just about food. Long before she became known for championing chefs and elevating meals on screen, the table was where her own family gathered to process life, the beautiful, the complicated, and the unspoken. It was a place to sit together, even when finding the right words was not easy.

Gail’s understanding of that sacred space deepened as a teenager, when her older brother Alan was diagnosed with schizophrenia, an often misunderstood and deeply stigmatized mental illness. In the midst of uncertainty, family meals became a quiet constant, a return to presence, to ritual, to simply being together. There were no grand speeches, no perfect conversations, only bowls of noodles at a small vegan restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown and the unspoken comfort of being fully seen.

Now, through her partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb and the COBENFY Connections campaign for World Mental Health Day, Gail is opening that table to others. She recently hosted an intimate dinner with individuals living with schizophrenia and their loved ones, a powerful reminder that food can be more than nourishment. It can be an invitation to listen, to witness, and to say you are not alone.

We asked Gail to reflect on how the dinner table became a safe space in her own life and how shared meals can open the door to connection, advocacy, and hope.

In Conversation with Gail Simmons

When you hear the phrase “the dinner table as a safe space”, what comes to mind from your own family experience? Ever since I was young, my parents made a point of having our kitchen and family table be a safe space where we could come together to debrief life, process the world around us, have honest conversations and connect. Now that I’m a parent, I do my best to enforce that same ethos for my own family and make our time together cooking and eating truly unconditional. This doesn’t just apply to my home either, but also to how I see connection with the greater community – the restaurant and food community I spend so much time with in my professional life. There is a constant fight to make mealtime at the table sacred, especially as life is full of stresses and distractions, which make it harder than ever to do so. I think having the kitchen table as a safe space is such an important concept. It’s where loved ones and strangers alike can engage in meaningful dialogue and connect. It’s a vital, universal human experience, no matter who or where you are. It grounds us, strengthens our relationships and sustains us in every sense of the word.

You’ve been open about your personal experience as a sibling of someone living with schizophrenia. Can you share a moment when a meal with your family felt like more than just food, when it created a space for connection, comfort, or healing? I was a teenager at the time my older brother, Alan, who was in his early twenties, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a persistent and often disabling mental illness affecting how a person thinks, feels and behaves. Through my family’s experiences, it became really clear to me just how important it is to talk about schizophrenia and mental health in general. That’s why I was so interested in partnering with Bristol Myers Squibb on the COBENFY Connections campaign.

There were not just one or two specific moments with my family when meals felt that way. I think it’s more about the cumulative feeling of knowing that every meal we shared was an open conversation. I have fond memories with my brother at this one vegan Chinese restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown. My brother was vegetarian for most of his life and vegan for some of it, and I’ll always remember going there with him, slurping noodles and just being together. It was a place where he didn’t have to explain being vegan to anyone, since this was when it wasn’t as easy to get good vegan food everywhere, and it was a place we both loved. To this day, whenever I drive by or go home to visit my family, I think about that spot and always associate it with him.

From your perspective as a culinary professional, what is it about sharing food that opens people up? I truly believe the table is at the heart of human connection. It’s where stories are shared, meals are enjoyed and relationships, as well as communities, are created. For example, until recently through the COBENFY Connections campaign,  I had never actually had the opportunity to sit down at a table with other people who have shared experiences with schizophrenia, either as a care partner or as someone with the diagnosis themselves. This experience instilled a sense of community and hope, knowing that there are people out there who share my family’s reality and can relate to it directly. I hope through this campaign others struggling with the condition will identify with us and feel the same.

What do you wish more families knew about supporting a loved one with a persistent mental illness? Never give up hope. Everyone’s journey looks different, and some people need more time to find what works for them. Through my partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb as part of the COBENFY Connections campaign, I spent time cooking and sharing a meal with people living with schizophrenia and their care partners. We had an authentic conversation, shared our perspectives and our realities and connected over our experiences with the condition. By spotlighting their inspiring stories, including real experiences from people living with schizophrenia and taking COBENFY, I want others struggling with the condition to know that they are not alone and that having the right support and finding the right treatment for them is important. To learn more about the campaign or our experiences shared around the table, people can visit connections.bms.com.

For families who want to make their table feel safer, where should they start? Time together around the table doesn’t have to be limited to just breakfast, lunch or dinner – it can be anytime. Establishing the table as a place to gather with one another and have conversations, both easy and difficult, can allow for families to better understand each other and how to be there for one another. It helps build a sense of empathy and fosters deeper connection. When I had the opportunity through this campaign to sit at the table with people who have this shared experience with or family connection to schizophrenia, it was so meaningful to me. It reinforced the importance of talking about mental health conditions like schizophrenia more openly, to help change the stigma around it and to find community, support, and the treatment that’s right for you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or to keep inside, and you usually find out that more people can relate to it than you would think.