Can you share a key memory where food made you feel something special?
Every year on my birthday without fail my mom would make me scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast. There wasn’t anything remarkable about them materially. But what sticks with me the most is the feeling of it. Waking up and walking down the stairs from my bedroom, wondering if I felt older or different in any way. Seeing her already standing over the stove, dressed for work sometimes, in pajamas other times. She was cooking just for me. I don’t think anything has ever made me feel so special and loved as those simple breakfasts. When I cook now, I try to take people to that place as best I can. To me, the food is important, but what really makes for a special experience is cooking directly for a person and helping them access this fantasy that they are the most significant person in the room.
You’ve said HAGS is “queer first, restaurant second.” What does that ordering actually change in practice, from the menu to how a table is run?
I actually see that ordering as pre-work, meaning the significance of our queerness is set for our guests before they even arrive. Before they set foot in HAGS, before they experience our service style, eat our food, enjoy our bathroom — our queerness is acknowledged. That creates a freedom for the staff as well as the guests to be exactly who they are. It also makes it impossible to separate our queerness from the work that we do and the service we provide. There is no list of attributes to point to proving the ways in which queerness has impacted the space, because the impacts are so inherent and in some cases personal. If I had to boil it down to a few examples, I’d say our collaborative way of writing the menu feels essentially queer. Everyone’s voice is heard and considered. We entertain elements such as camp, irreverence, and flamboyance in our creative process. We orient the menu and physical space around accessibility, inclusivity and harm reduction measures. Our playlist features exclusively queer musicians. We have a full page of queer wine producers on our wine list. The art on our walls is by queer artists. There are countless winks and nods through the space to queer history, icons of the community, previous and current queer projects. The list can grow endless, and in a way can make us seem like more of an art project than a place to get a yummy dinner. Ultimately, it isn’t so cerebral. We are queer people before we are working people, and that matters to us. But we make a hell of a yummy dinner.
Fine dining has historically been built on rigid hierarchy and exclusivity. What specifically did you set out to dismantle or rebuild at HAGS?
Before HAGS, I had felt this growing frustration that the traditional modes of building and running a restaurant were at odds with individuality. I felt squashed in other work settings and unfulfilled despite being deeply passionate for the material work. I saw other people around me feeling similarly. It seemed possible to me to build something different — not necessarily better, but different. A place for people to work where our individuality was seen as a benefit, not an inefficiency. We are still figuring out how to build that space every day. It’s a living document that takes every voice in the room to write. I can do my best to direct it, but I can’t entirely dictate the shape of it. Breaking something down and rebuilding takes time, it’s hard work. There are many moments of failure and ample time for self-reflection. I don’t know if HAGS has really changed the dining landscape so much, but I do know that building HAGS has changed me.
“HAGS” reclaims a word that’s historically been used as an insult. Was that reclamation a way of thinking about what queer fine dining could reclaim more broadly?
At first, no. We named the restaurant as though we were naming a punk band. We wanted it to feel irreverent and not so self-serious. And the queer community has a long history of reclaiming divisive terms. But the name has become kind of a flag for us. That spirit of reclamation has, over time, become a driving component of what inspires us.
You chose the East Village for its queer and punk history. How much does a restaurant’s physical and historical context matter to what you’re building?
Restaurants can have huge impacts on their blocks and neighborhoods, in both positive and negative ways. We wanted to build our first restaurant in a place that we loved and wanted to contribute to. The East Village was a neighborhood that inspired us for so many reasons. We wanted to build something that felt in keeping with this beautiful, rich neighborhood identity. That may not be how everyone selects their commercial real estate, but I do think it helps to ensure community support over time. Who wouldn’t want that?
