Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants

New York Times culture reporter Piepenburg debuts with a nostalgic cross-country tour of the eateries that “nourished, changed, and continue to inspire” LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. Among the venues spotlighted are Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., which served as a haven for closeted gay men in the 1950s and ’60s; Pfaff’s Saloon in Manhattan, which opened in 1856 and was frequented by Walt Whitman (sometimes with his lover Fred Vaughan in tow); and mid-20th-century New York City’s Automats, which served food via vending machine and drew in gay patrons with their cafeteria-style seating and promise of relative anonymity (though diners could signal “their same-sex attraction to other customers” by wearing purple or lavender). The author’s joyously randy personal anecdotes about coming of age in the gay restaurant scene, combined with his discussions of such topics as drag culture and the AIDS epidemic, enliven this intimate ode to the intersections of queer and culinary culture. It’s a sweet and sincere celebration of what it means to be welcomed in body and spirit. (June)