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

New York Times reporter Erik Piepenburg shines a long-overdue spotlight on the vital but often overlooked role restaurants have played in LGBTQ+ life—a history that’s received far less attention than that of bars.

“What can you do at a gay restaurant that you can’t do at a gay bar?” he asks. The list is unexpectedly rich: sharing meals after a 12-step meeting, gathering with your high school drama club, or dining as an elder in a place that knows your name and your order.

Piepenburg traces this story across centuries, from Pfaff’s in Manhattan (est. 1856), where Walt Whitman was a regular, to institutions like Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse in Washington, DC, and Bloodroot in Bridgeport, CT. Along the way, he recovers lost spaces like Enrico & Paglieri—once outed in a 1920s essay by Djuna Barnes—and celebrates those who pushed back against exclusion, often women, trans people, and people of color.

Through interviews with diners, servers, owners, and activists, Piepenburg makes the case that even today—when queer couples can eat openly in most restaurants—spaces shaped by and for LGBTQ+ people continue to matter.

Hardcover. Color photographic insert.