The Melrose was a gay restaurant because gay people made it one. It was where older gay couples sampled each other’s roast beef and mashed potato specials without asking first, as across the dining room, a four-top of butches feasted on chunky patty melts and audibly crisp chicken fingers. I once watched a table of loud-mouthed drag queens scarf down platters of grease-soaked bacon-and-cheese potato skins at two a.m. after they’d taken their bows at Foxy’s or Berlin, two of my favorite gay clubs that are now just memories. During weekend brunch hours, the Melrose transformed into the dining equivalent of a hopping gay bar, but with egg-white skillets and the roar of gossip instead of overpriced Cosmos and the thump of Chicago house music.
That was part of the intro from Erik Piepenburg’s new book, Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants. Erik is a journalist; he’s been writing for the New York Times since 2004, covering a variety of subjects: theater, food, travel, and LQBTQ topics; notably, he wrote a piece in 2021 about the endurance of gay restaurants, which ended up leading to Dining Out, a unique and lovely book that came out this month, which we discussed with him today. You can read a fuller excerpt from Dining Out right here.
Side note: I’d never met Erik before, and now I’m going to try and make him my new best friend. He is SO GREAT!
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