The Gayest Dish on the Menu, According to 10 Queer-Owned Restaurants

We’ve already established that food is gay. It can be made by queer people, in places that center queer needs, and become the centerpiece of a community. But as it relates to the dishes themselves, the definitions get blurrier. What makes a sandwich queer, and conversely, what would make one straight? We decided to ask.

Here, 10 chefs from around the country tell us about the gayest dishes on their menus, and what makes them so. For some, what makes a dish queer is its refusal to adhere to tradition, doing something that challenges diners while still nurturing them. For others, its flamboyant colors or a fun name, bringing joy to the moment of ordering and service. Sometimes it’s just the fact that a queer person conceived of it, using their lifetime of influences and sensibilities to craft something new. There’s no one answer, just as there’s no one way for queerness to manifest. Queerness is what you make it. Even if what you’re making is aspic.

“At this moment, I would say the gayest thing would be our cocktail One of Your Girls. It’s a IYKYK reference to Troye Sivan’s song. Besides the name being a nod to maybe the sexiest music video to exist, it also supports Supergay Vodka out of New York. It is lavender colored and has edible glitter in it. It’s easy to drink, colorful, and fun.” — Max Ritcey, owner of Ritcey East, Watertown, Massachusetts

“Undoubtedly, the gayest thing on the menu at the Ruby Fruit is the hot dog — the irony of which is not lost on us. Prior to the Ruby Fruit opening, Emily and I started hosting sapphic nights at TRF’s former restaurant Eszett [called ‘LEszett’], running pop-ups around town out of my 1984 Volkswagen Westfalia, and the hot dog was an instant hit. It was the perfect snack to eat while mingling and milling around festivals and markets. Since then, at the end of the day, the hot dog is just plain delicious, especially after a few glasses of wine, or paired with a Miller High Life. For VIP guests (or GOATs as we like to call them), we like to dress her up in hot dog holders made by an artist we love, Cocodrila from Chile. They are custom-made, bespoke designs and no two are alike — the perfect vessel for the dog. So if you happen to get your hot dog delivered in one of these ceramic holders, know that you’re a VIP in our book. It’s an unfussy, fully satisfying drunk snack that I think represents the good time vibes at the Roob. — Mara Herbkersman, co-owner/chef, The Ruby Fruit, Los Angeles

“The gayest thing on our menu would be Love Advice. We list it with our desserts and it’s a pretty popular menu item: A guest asks us or shares something that’s been going on for them in the love department and then we give them our best love advice. Obviously everyone needs love advice, not just queer people, but listing it on a menu in the first place is pretty damn gay.” — Halo Perez-Gallardo, co-founder, chef, and creative director of Lil Deb’s Oasis, Hudson, New York

“For the past two decades, New Orleans has celebrated Easter with our gay Easter Parade. Drag queens in their full Sunday best ride horse-drawn carriages through the French Quarter, throwing candy to children, and all the gay bars in the quarter host events. It’s really special and subversive. My wife and I even planned our wedding to take place the Saturday before Easter so we could all celebrate by going to the parade the next day. (Covid got in the way, but you get the idea.) I think my Easter cake is a little demented and a little strange, and that’s what makes it queer for me — a traditional, hyper-feminine bake associated with a religious holiday, but done with a campy, fey twist. An Easter cake for John Waters, if you will.” — Bronwen Wyatt, owner, Bayou Saint Cakes, New Orleans

For a little background, our bookstore sells only queer written stories and/or queer-centered content. The same goes for our cafe: All of our coffee, syrups, snacks, and teas are from queer-owned businesses as well. That makes it hard to narrow down. If we had to choose just one, I would say our cafe makes a pretty gay iced lavender oat milk latte with salted cold foam. Not only does it match our logo, but it is clearly the gayest because it uses Pink House Alchemy lavender syrup and Queer Wave Espresso. Also, it’s glittery! — Kaitlyn Mahoney, owner, Under the Umbrella, Salt Lake City

“I’ve somehow always known that I was queer, but the first time I thought of a food as queer wasn’t until 2019 when I got invited to participate in Queer Soup Night. And it made so much sense. Soup is nourishing and nurturing, a comfort food that you cook for a loved one in the intimacy of your home, a hug in edible form. It’s humble and not flashy, and to me, the opposite of a ‘macho’ food. On the menu at Lion Dance Cafe, we feature laksa, a crowd favorite since our early pop-up days. It’s also our mutual aid bowl, a hot meal that we offer our marginalized guests. Our laksa starts with a 15-ingredient rempah [spice paste] which gets fried in coconut fat, and an aromatic stock. It’s lemak [creamy] from coconut milk, and served with rice noodles, yuba, taupok, laksa leaves, urfa chile sambal, and a chile crisp, also made from scratch.

As cliched as it is to say, it’s a labor of love, and when diners tell us that this soup warmed their bodies and their hearts, I am reminded of the power of food as a path to connection.” — C-Y Chia, chef and founder of the former Lion Dance Cafe, Oakland, California

Cafe Mutton

“Producing food that speaks more to what pleases me than to what others expect to see produced in a restaurant is very similar to being out in any queer way. Just as I was raised in straight culture, I came up in a lot of kitchens whose food was very patriarchal and status-quo. When we talk about gay food, I think we are prioritizing the wisdom of joy over the traditions of fear we have inherited in many cooking settings and in society. I feel joyful when I make any form of jellied meat. The just-strong enough wobble of aspic holding together a terrine of head cheese is my poetic resistance against the homogenized nature of our country’s greater food culture, which parallels the political ambience of misogyny and bodily fear, and that, to me, is gay as hell.” — Shaina Loew-Banayan, chef and owner of Cafe Mutton, Hudson, New York

“I think the gayest item on our menu is our raspberry jam-filled Berliner [doughnut]. It’s *topped* with powdered sugar and divinely filled with delicious raspberry jam.” — Djo Maurer, founder and baker at Black Forest Bakery, Los Angeles

“We offer a Business Woman Special on our happy hour menu. It’s a cup of soup and a half-Sazerac. What makes it gay? It’s so thoughtful and funny and daring. After pandemic closures, when we were talking about Water Bear Bar reopening in spring 2021, we were redefining who we are and what our bar is in the community, and really, were trying to start laughing a lot. And during that time we were watching Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. We were enamored with the part of the movie when they stopped at a roadside diner and proceeded to change their clothes –– changing their look to be more ‘business women’-like. They walk in and ask the lady working the diner if they have a ‘business woman special’ — it’s a gag — but for us it was like, look at these women walking in so confidently as ‘business women,’ asking for a business woman special. The lady working the diner replies, ‘What kinda business are you in?’ This strongly resonated with how we felt at that time. Two women trying to get this bar open after almost losing it –– we need to be confident, we are business women now.

The choice to make it a cup of soup and a half of a Sazerac was kind of a nod toward the no nonsense of a business lady on the go. Delicious, nutritious, and serving an expedient need. The Sazerac is a big cocktail. I mean, anyone can drink it anytime and it’s classy AF, but to have ‘just half’ of one is to be aware that you’ve got business to attend to. We thought this was super gay awareness, and we wanted to have that little bite of food paired with our no-nonsense attitude as business women taking on the world. — Kylie North and Laura Keeler, owners, Water Bear Bar, Boise, Idaho

“I’d say the queerest thing on the menu is Sex Work, our version of the modern British classic, the porn star martini. I felt it was an important way to shift the dialogue from this romanticized version of a porn star to the reality of a profession that can be particularly powerful and liberating, although far too often dangerous, work for people in the queer community. Due to the nature of their work and the fact that it’s often illegal, therefore under the table, sex workers were left particularly vulnerable during this time. This gave rise to what has become often lucrative OnlyFans pages, and this really drove home the fact that this is work.

Society often views people in this line of work through the lens of the consumer and we really wanted to shift the focus with renaming and updating this cocktail. I think OnlyFans is really what nailed this shift, putting the power back in the hands of the workers. Too often in our community people, often trans people, are forced to work in the sex industry to survive. New technologies have made this safer and more lucrative but it is still a very dangerous line of work due to the fact that the government feels empowered to regulate our bodies. Sex Work is meant to celebrate all of these facts about the oldest profession there is.” — Isaac MacDougal, owner of Cocktail Mary, Portland, Maine

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Additional photo credits: soup from Water Bear Bar; Bayou Saint Cake; Cafe Mutton; Black Forest Bakery, all courtesy of the restaurants.