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

As gay restaurants evolve and chart new futures, New York Times journalist Erik Piepenburg takes readers on a tour of American gay dining, with stops at 1930s Automats, lesbian bistros, Wisconsin sports bars, pioneering drag brunches, and other restaurant destinations, including his own beloved diners. It's a trip that's full of joy, sex, sorrow, activism, and nostalgia.

Dining Out explores how gay people came of age, came out, and fought for their rights not just in gay bars or the streets, but in restaurants, from cruisy urban cafeterias of the 1920s to mom-and-pop diners that fed the Stonewall generation to the intersectional hotspots of the early 21st century. Using archival material, original reporting and interviews, and first-person accounts, Erik Piepenburg explores how LGBTQ restaurants shaped, and continue to shape, generations of gay Americans.

Through the eyes of a reporter and the stomach of a hungry gay man, Dining Out examines the rise, impact, and legacies of the nation’s gay restaurants past, present, and future. Hamburger Mary’s, Florent, a suburban Denny’s queered by kids: Piepenburg explores how these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners and unconventional eateries connected meals with memories and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.

About the Author

Erik Piepenburg has been writing for The New York Times since 2004, covering LGBTQ+ issues, film, theater, television, food and travel. His writing has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times,Time Out New York, the Chicago Reader, Out magazine, and other publications. Originally and proudly from Cleveland, he lives with his partner in New York City.