Eater - All |
- James Beard Foundation Awards 2022: Winners, News, and Updates
- How I Got My Job: Creating Weeknight Recipe Faves for Top Publications and Writing a Cookbook
- The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants
- How to Save Endangered Foods
- The 15 Essential San Antonio Restaurants
- Go Ahead, Buy Yourself an Ice Cream Cake
- This Recipe for Roasted Potatoes With Bagna Cauda Is a Buttery, Garlicky Revelation
- Restaurant-Quality Wine, Delivered to Your Door Every Month? Yes, Please.
- This Nonprofit Isn’t Just Feeding People. It’s Fighting for Reparations.
- HAGS Will Be Queer First, and a Restaurant Second
| James Beard Foundation Awards 2022: Winners, News, and Updates Posted: 03 Feb 2022 12:55 PM PST  Everything you need to know about the restaurant, chef, and media awards The James Beard Foundation Awards are among the highest honors in the American food world. After two strained years, the ceremony honoring chefs and restaurants is scheduled to take place as it had in pre-pandemic times, in a ceremony in Chicago on Monday, June 13, 2022. As in years past, there will also be a Media Awards, also in June. (The Foundation hasn't announced the official date, but it has often been within the week prior to the Restaurant & Chef Awards.) The semifinalist list is expected at some time in February, with finalists for restaurant, chefs, and media awards landing in March. The 2022 awards are the Foundation's first following an extensive audit, and will feature a few new key protocols, including a different way of surfacing talent, nominee personal statements, and different awards categories. The cancelled 2020 ceremony was, broadly speaking, a mess; the Foundation initially blamed the pandemic, but reporting also suggested that it cancelled the awards because there were no Black winners, and because of concerns around allegations of bullying and sexism among nominees. Some chefs voluntarily took themselves out of consideration, while others were reportedly told they were being dismissed. The 2021 program was cancelled to allow enough time to do the audit and implement changes. All told, the Foundation lost a lot of credibility around its most high-profile contribution to America's culinary landscape: its award program. The 2022 awards will be watched to see not only who wins, but also whether the promises of the audit are fulfilled, and if the interventions and changes the Foundation has made actually produce a more diverse and inclusive winners' list — and, arguably above all, to see what happens to what has historically been America's most coveted culinary prize. |
| How I Got My Job: Creating Weeknight Recipe Faves for Top Publications and Writing a Cookbook Posted: 03 Feb 2022 08:00 AM PST  From testing recipes to food styling, Ali Slagle has found a way to create a freelance career defined by the creativity and quiet recipe development allows her In How I Got My Job, folks from across the food and restaurant industry answer Eater's questions about, well, how they got their job. Today's installment: Ali Slagle. We've all been there: Standing at the open fridge, staring at its contents, and trying to figure out what to cook that's quick, easy, and delicious. That's where Ali Slagle comes in. The recipe developer is known for her low-effort, high-reward recipes that make preparing weeknight dinner a joyful endeavor. In fact, her contributions to the New York Times, Bon Appétit, and the Washington Post have set the stage for her debut spring-release cookbook entirely dedicated to fast, flexible evening meals. I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) is a culmination of a food media career that began with a series of fortunate events. While working at an independent bookstore in college, Slagle asked her boss for any publishing industry connections in the Bay Area. That single inquiry landed her a sales and marketing internship at Ten Speed Press that turned into a full-time editorial assistant position after graduation, which led to a three-year tenure at Food52 that prepared her for the freelance life she leads now. From recipe testing and food styling to developing original recipes for the most respected publications in the country, Slagle seemingly does it all — including traveling around the country in an old Japanese van. In the following interview, she discusses learning by observing, having a point of view, and living with perpetual imposter syndrome no matter what successes you may achieve. Eater: Did you go to culinary school or college? Ali Slagle: I wanted to work in a field that'd in some way help people with basic human needs, like access to shelter, food, and mental and other health resources, so I planned to study public health. It turned out that it was really hard to get into the public health program at my college, so I pivoted, though I hope my work in some small way is still fulfilling that goal. Instead, I decided to pick my major based on which courses sounded coolest, so I majored in geography and minored in Chinese at UC Berkeley. While it may not seem like my major had anything to do with my future work, it did impact how I think. Social geography looks at the relationship between people and place. When I'm developing a recipe, I ask myself a billion questions, including: What's the most efficient way to move around a kitchen to execute this dish? How is this technique or ingredient combination found around the world? What resources (ingredients, equipment, time, budget, effort) is this recipe expending and is it a worthwhile use of them? What's the blueprint of this recipe that people can adapt to suit their needs? My "culinary school" was watching my mom cook dinner while I sat at the kitchen table doing homework and reading all her cookbooks. I feel like I've had hundreds of cooking teachers — my family, cookbooks, cooking shows — instead of the handful I might've had at an official school. What was your first job? What did it involve? The moment I passed my driving test, I started pestering an independent bookstore to hire me. They eventually gave me a job once they realized I was never going to leave them alone. It was a small bookstore specializing in travel guides, so I'd stock shelves and recommend books to people going on trips. It could be pretty slow at times, which was bad for business but great for me. I'd spend a lot of time on the couch reading about the world. How did you get into the food industry? Working at the bookstore, I became interested in how all these books were made, so I asked my boss if she knew of any publishers in the Bay Area I could intern for during college, and, in the luckiest of lucks, she knew someone at Ten Speed Press, a publisher that specialized in — the next stroke of luck — cookbooks. I interned for them all through college and then took a job there when I graduated. I edited Food52's Genius Recipes and got to know the book's spunky and deeply talented author, Kristen Miglore. She was someone I knew would teach me so much if I could be in her orbit. After that book wrapped, Food52 was doing a big round of hiring, so I applied to be an editor there and got the job. As an editor at the small-at-the-time start-up, I had a million different jobs and worked with so many people; those few years gave me the network and know-how to eventually take the leap to freelance. What was the biggest challenge you faced when you were starting out in the industry? A perpetual challenge, even now, is feeling like I qualify or have the skills for a job. There's no bar exam for recipe developing, nor is there even a clear path to get into it. I didn't go to culinary school and have never worked in a restaurant kitchen; "I love food" does not make a good resume. So how do you explain to someone — including yourself — you're qualified? I still don't have a good answer. Lies? Trickery? Just kidding? When was the first time you felt successful? The first time someone recommended a recipe to me they didn't realize was mine. What does your job involve? What's your favorite part about it? Jobs, plural, you mean? Being a freelancer is being an octopus. 1. Recipe development: Create my own recipes with a focus on low effort and high reward. All of these things require a lot of schlepping, thinking, receipts, invoices, and emails, but otherwise they each scratch a different itch. How did the pandemic affect your career? Most of my income used to come from food and prop styling. Recipe development was where my heart was, but it did not pay the bills. The pandemic paused most of my styling work, and with that one of the main reasons I needed to be in New York went poof. My boyfriend's job went remote, so we realized we could kind of live anywhere and still do our jobs. Cut to: Last summer we gave up our apartment in Brooklyn and squeezed our life into an old Japanese van that my boyfriend converted into a camper with a couch, bed, makeshift kitchen, etc. We've been traveling around the country since September, stopping every so often at Airbnbs or friends' houses so I have a bigger kitchen to work from. It's forced me to lean on remote-friendly sources of income, so I've been doing more recipe testing. But by living in different houses in different cities and towns, I've learned so much about grocery shopping, what equipment people usually stock, stove strengths, kitchen layouts — all this will undoubtedly affect recipes I develop going forward. What would surprise people about your job? You will make more food than you can eat and you must have a plan for getting it out of the house. I cook around five recipes a day. Every day. Sometimes the same recipe more than once. Community fridges have been lifesavers; I hope more cities get them and the current fridges stay forever. Do you have, or did you ever have, a mentor in your field? I owe it all to certain women, like Yossy Arefi, Michele Crim, Kristen Miglore, Christine Muhlke, and Sam Seneviratne, who taught, challenged, and generally looked after me, but they also just let me be around them. You can learn a lot by observing other people do their jobs and listening to their conversations. Creepy, totally, but it meant that even if I hadn't done the thing before — styled a cupcake, pitched a story idea, interviewed a chef — I had seen it happen and could impersonate it as best as I could when I needed to. What's the best piece of career advice you've been given? The founder of Food52, Amanda Hesser, was adamant about having a point of view, which I think about often. Yes, this is another freaking chicken thigh recipe, so how is it different from the others and why does it need to exist? Same with my cookbook — like, do we really need another dinner cookbook? $29.99 is more than fits in most piggy banks, and you can get a billion recipes for free online. I was obsessive about making sure my cookbook would truly help people and bring a little joy to their lives. What advice would you give someone who wants your job? Priya Krishna shared an email Francis Lam sent her that is invaluable (her website also has a ton of great resources). See the email a few slides in, here. Francis said it perfectly, but to think of it another way, when you're spacing out at a job you're not into, what do the days in your daydreams look like? I dreamt of being alone in a kitchen with coffee and quiet (hi, fellow shy people). I would be in charge of when and where I worked. I would do a little computer work, write sometimes, but mostly I'd just be lost in my ingredients and thoughts. Then I figured out what job(s) would allow me to do that. Morgan Goldberg is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. |
| The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants Posted: 03 Feb 2022 06:26 AM PST |
| Posted: 02 Feb 2022 10:30 AM PST  Coffee, wine, and wheat varieties are among the foods we could lose forever https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22906478/food-diversity-extinction-dan-saladino |
| The 15 Essential San Antonio Restaurants Posted: 02 Feb 2022 07:32 AM PST |
| Go Ahead, Buy Yourself an Ice Cream Cake Posted: 02 Feb 2022 06:42 AM PST  There's no need for a special occasion to treat yourself, you are the special occasion Now that January is over, there is some hope that the previous month's incessant diet culture messaging will die down soon as the hordes of people who promised to eat healthy and exercise realize that both of those things are boring as hell. Even if you haven't been depriving yourself over the last month, now is as good a time as any to treat yourself to an ice cream cake. Ice cream cakes are, like most cakes, typically reserved for celebratory experiences. The practice dates back to antiquity, when ancient Greeks would bake cakes and set them alight with candles in worship of Artemis, the goddess of the moon; Romans stirred together flour, honey, and nuts to feed wedding guests. Ice cream cakes are, of course, a much newer innovation popularized by chains like Carvel and Baskin-Robbins, but no more frequently consumed — they're reserved only for children's birthday parties and office events not worth the cost of a custom cake. Which is why, strolling down the frozen foods section of my neighborhood grocery store a couple of months ago, I was a little surprised to see a small Carvel ice cream cake sitting on the shelf next to the Marie Callender's frozen apple pies. I hadn't even thought about ice cream cake in years, and the pandemic has halted most of the celebrations that require a dessert that can feed more than a couple of people. On an impulse, I threw it into my cart. At $12, the cake was a little more expensive than the typical pint of Jeni's I have on my grocery list, but not so much that it felt like some incredible splurge. After getting it home, I tucked it into the freezer and went on about my day, remembering about eight hours later that I had an actual ice cream cake all to myself, just waiting inside the freezer. I cracked open the box and sliced into the cake, which was still somehow a little soft. I had to pry the cake off the bottom of the box a little, but no worries — if worse came to worst and I had to eat it off the cardboard disc it was piped onto at the Carvel factory, this was my ice cream cake and it didn't have to look pretty. The first bite was an instant hit of nostalgia-induced dopamine. The layers of chocolate and vanilla were separated by a layer of Carvel's classic "crunchies," or crushed-up bits of cookies that add essential textural contrast. The cake's marshmallow icing is an absolute feat of food engineering, staying soft and fluffy in the freezer but never getting too gooey or melty after warming up on the plate. A ring of icing dyed with some chemical that is probably banned in Europe piped around the edge of the cake and showered with pastel sprinkles, stained the corners of my mouth. After eating a slice, I stuck the rest of the cake back into its box inside the freezer where it sat for a few more days, waiting for me to remember it again. Even after accumulating a little mild freezer burn, it tasted and looked basically the same. As I whittled the leftovers down over the course of a week, my $12 investment proved sound. It also got me to thinking about celebration, and what that means in a time when throwing a party to mark even the most major of milestones could literally prove deadly. Sure, plenty of people have continued on with their birthday parties and beach vacations as if there is no pandemic, but for those of us that are incapable of that level of delusion, we have been robbed of so many small joys in these past two years, not to mention the crushing weight of trying to survive a pandemic in the era of late capitalism. And so we must make those joys ourselves. To do that, we can plop down $12 on an ice cream cake and celebrate the fact that we made it through a Wednesday without cussing anybody out, or that we finally finished the mountain of laundry that's lurked in the corner of the bedroom for a month. Making our own joy can also be for literally no reason — simply because you enjoy eating a slice of ice cream cake and because you fucking deserve it. As much as it sounds like some bullshit you might read in a self-help book, finding time to celebrate nothing, to enjoy an ice cream cake by yourself just because, turns out to be pretty good for your (my) mental health. Learning that you don't need a reason, or an excuse, to treat yourself, is a surprising revelation, one that comes with a great deal of joy and freedom — and maybe a little bit of freezer burn. |
| This Recipe for Roasted Potatoes With Bagna Cauda Is a Buttery, Garlicky Revelation Posted: 02 Feb 2022 06:30 AM PST  Twelve cloves of garlic, 20 anchovies, and a stick of butter conspire to transform the humble potato Nancy Silverton, the James Beard award-winning chef and restaurateur, may be known for her magic touch with bread, pizza, and pastries, but in her cooking class for YesChef — a subscription-based streaming platform offering cinematic cooking classes taught by world-renowned chefs — she's gently coaxing the flavor out of buttery-soft potatoes. "What I love doing is cooking them until they're almost cooked before finishing them in the oven," Silverton says of the potatoes, which she confits in an aromatic bath of olive oil, butter, garlic cloves, and herbs. In this recipe, Silverton pairs the potatoes with bagna cauda, an Italian sauce of sharp garlic and briny, salty anchovies. Once the potatoes are tender to a knife's poke and have steeped in the warm oil until cool, Silverton spoons some reserved oil onto a sheet pan, and transfers over the halved potatoes.  The spuds crisp in a hot oven while Silverton prepares bagna cauda to go alongside. "This is really to taste," she says, "it's not science." Silverton likes her bagna cauda to telegraph the pungent taste of garlic, and a kick of saltiness from anchovies, so she goes heavy on both ingredients. Though the sauce is traditionally eaten as a dip with raw vegetables, Silverton likes the way anchovies pair with creamy bufala mozzarella or, in this case, tender potatoes. In a mortar, Silverton smashes 12 cloves of garlic — you read that right — and a small school of anchovies until the mixture is an emulsified paste. This fishy combination meets melted butter on the stove, letting the garlic and anchovy simmer and the flavors meld. "It's so good," Silverton says, tasting the finished dipping sauce. "I would take a warm bath in this any day." Using just eight ingredients, Silverton turns out a dish in which potatoes feel elegant and anchovies are the star of the show. With a bag of potatoes, and enough garlic and tinned fish, you can too. — Elazar Sontag Roasted Potatoes With Bagna Cauda RecipeServes 5 Ingredients:For the roasted potatoes: 3 pounds German Butterball potatoes (Butterball potatoes are fluffy, creamy, and soft; if you can't find them, substitute with Yukon Gold potatoes) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks Instructions:For the roasted potatoes: Step 1: Adjust the oven rack to the floor of the oven and preheat to 500 degrees. Step 2: Halve the potatoes lengthwise. Step 3: Put the potatoes in a large sauté pan in a single layer. Step 4: Cover with olive oil and add the butter and half the rosemary sprigs, sage leaves, and garlic cloves. Step 5: Season the potatoes with salt and place the pan over medium-low heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. The potatoes should cook only partially, as they will continue to roast in the oven. To test for doneness, insert a knife into a potato; the flesh should have a little resistance. Step 6: Turn off the heat and allow the potatoes to steep in the butter-oil mixture for 10 minutes. Step 7: Ladle about ½ cup of the butter-oil mixture onto a baking sheet, rotating the pan to cover the bottom surface, and season generously with salt. Adding salt directly onto the sheet pan ensures that the underside of the potatoes is seared and salted upon contact. Step 8: Use tongs to remove the potatoes from the butter-oil mixture and transfer them to a baking sheet, cut side down. Scatter with the remaining sage, rosemary, and garlic cloves. Step 9: Roast the potatoes until their edges are nicely browned, about 30 to 40 minutes. Step 10: To serve, arrange the roasted potatoes on a platter, cut side up. Add the roasted garlic and crumble the charred rosemary and sage on top. While the potatoes are roasting, make the bagna cauda: Step 1: Combine the butter and olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Step 2: Smash 20 anchovy fillets and 12 large garlic cloves in a mortar and pestle until ground together. Alternatively, you can chop the anchovies into a paste with a knife and use a Microplane to grate the garlic. Step 3: Once the butter completely melts, add the anchovy-garlic paste and the chile. Step 4: Cook over medium-low heat until the anchovies dissolve and the garlic is soft and fragrant, 5 to 6 minutes. Stir constantly so the garlic doesn't brown. Step 5: Reduce the heat to low and cook the bagna cauda for another 2 to 3 minutes to meld the flavors. Step 6: Turn off the heat and let the bagna sauce rest in the pan until ready to use it. Step 7: Use the bagna cauda as a dipping sauce for your potatoes. If serving with bufala mozzarella and sauces with fett'unta, stir in Italian parsley before serving and float a Spanish anchovy on top for presentation and serve warm. Stir to recombine the ingredients before serving and from time to time when it is on the buffet or dinner table. |
| Restaurant-Quality Wine, Delivered to Your Door Every Month? Yes, Please. Posted: 01 Feb 2022 01:26 PM PST  Get in on Eater Wine Club, a monthly wine subscription One of the things we love most about food is wine. Specifically, the wine you get to drink while dining out at your favorite restaurant, be it your go-to local joint or the fanciest place in town. This is wine selected by someone who knows what they're doing — a professional who understands how to decode a label and what kind of grapes will make your food taste that much better. So, we wondered, what if we made it possible to experience that kind of hospitality right at home? /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23210904/anassner_210224_ECL1039_Blog_KylaMarie_1024x1024.png) Say hello to Eater Wine Club, a monthly wine subscription box. Our extensive network of local editors have teamed up with sommeliers and beverage directors from some of our favorite restaurants, bars, and shops across the country to curate a new experience each month, with ever-changing themes and bottles and plenty of perks. Sign up and you'll get a box full of surprising and highly drinkable wines on your doorstep every month, plus an exclusive tips and expertise from each month's host via our newsletter. For February, our wine curators are Kyla Peal and Marie Cheslik, the co-founding duo of Slik Wines in Chicago. For their takeover, Kyla and Marie came up with a can't-miss exploration of wines that come from volcanic regions across the world. Head here to learn more about their wine picks. Then join the club and invite your friends — from the one who geeks out over cool labels to the one who just wants you to hand them a glass of something delicious that'll make their food pop. See you at the party! |
| This Nonprofit Isn’t Just Feeding People. It’s Fighting for Reparations. Posted: 01 Feb 2022 09:13 AM PST |
| HAGS Will Be Queer First, and a Restaurant Second Posted: 01 Feb 2022 08:55 AM PST  Telly Justice and Camille Lindsley are creating a blueprint for fine dining's queer future with their upcoming New York City opening, HAGS The dining room at 163 First Avenue in New York's East Village is barely big enough to fit two people standing side by side. Any sunlight that hits the front of the cramped building is choked out before making its way through a tiny window that looks out onto the street. There was a time when all of this discomfort added to the allure of David Chang's restaurant empire, when he used the space to launch lauded restaurants that still exist in some form today: his first restaurant, Noodle Bar, and later, Ko. For most of the years Chang occupied 163 First Avenue, it was nearly impossible to get into. The stiff stools lining the wooden chef's counter did not have backs to lean on. Substitutions were frowned upon, snapping photographs was a no-no, and hearing chefs curse loudly as they plated dishes in the open kitchen made the whole ordeal feel very "punk rock." The cramped quarters and general stiffness weren't addressed as much as considered part of the restaurant's appeal. Telly Justice and Camille Lindsley would like for you to picture the restaurant bright and welcoming, with big front windows that flood with light, and colorful walls that make you feel warm and happy. They stand in the very same narrow East Village kitchen, holding paint panels up against the wall, envisioning the dining room as it will be when they open their restaurant here in April. The menu at HAGS will accommodate any number of substitutions and dietary restrictions. The chairs will be comfortable enough that you won't be limping back into the night after a long dinner. Waiters will sit, relaxed at your table while they take an order, or pause in the rush of dinner service to try a new wine and catch up with a regular. The concept at New York's latest fine dining restaurant could not be further from that of the building's past incarnations — or of pretty much any other upscale restaurant in New York, for that matter, but Justice and Lindsley share Chang's desire to turn the concept of fine dining on its head. "We would have been so sad to just open another [restaurant]," Justice says. "But at the end of the day, we're opening a little boutique, fine dining restaurant in Manhattan." So what is HAGS, if not just another costly culinary experience in a cramped dining room? It is a space, as Lindsley and Justice see it (and hope you will, too) where queerness comes first, and all else comes second. Telly Justice started her career as an 18-year-old cook in vegan cafes and anarchist kitchens — the kind of places with poetry readings at night and a library's worth of political manifestos in the dining rooms. She thrived in those environments, where she could "wear a dress to work and learn how to dice a tomato." She was a fast study, and though she says she "didn't have any life-sustaining skill [or] know how to cook anything," she soon enough found herself ready for and craving a more technical culinary education. But as Justice, now 34, went in search of a kitchen where she could further sharpen her skills, she bumped up against more than just difficult techniques. "I didn't foresee that my trans identity was going to create a stumbling block to my success in the kitchen," she says. "I didn't have an awareness of kitchen culture at all. So in my mind, I was like, I am who I am. I love to cook. This is going to be great." After a stint cooking in Atlanta, in 2011 Justice secured a job as a cook at a buzzy open kitchen restaurant in Philadelphia — with chefs essentially performing for a captive audience of diners sitting just feet away. "They offered me a job and I said, 'You know, I'm trans and I use she/her pronouns.' And I distinctly remember the chef on the other side of the phone said, 'Well, not here. You're not going to be out here.'" /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23207746/HAGS_JJW_6.jpg) Others might have hung up and looked for work elsewhere. Instead, Justice showed up the next day, knife roll in hand, an apron over her shoulder. "I got very angry and I settled into this place, like, 'I'm going to be the best cook at this restaurant.' And I kept pushing that field goal a little bit further everywhere I went. I became the best cook at that restaurant. And then I wanted to move to New York City and I wanted to work in Michelin-starred kitchens. I wanted to be the best cooks in those kitchens. And I never stopped being angry." Justice went on to work the line at beloved New York restaurants including Contra, Wildair, and the now-closed Alder. She moved up the chain of command with ease, but not for a single moment did she feel comfortable. Camille Lindsley, Justice's romantic and business partner, has always been surrounded by food, but never thought she'd end up in professional kitchens. Now 29, Lindsley spent her teenage years surrounded by a community of "queer weirdos, anarchists, wanting to cook food and do potlucks and dumpster dive for bread and things like that," she says. Then, much like now, as she and Justice build their restaurant, food was a means by which to commune. It was never a pursuit that put technique and culinary prowess above all else — a core tenet of much of fine dining. When Lindsley first found work in professional kitchens, she was struck by just how much of what she loved about cooking was missing. "I always had a really political relationship with food," she says. "When I started working in restaurants, I realized that the world that I had been in was not at all the world that existed in restaurants." Instead, she found that "horrible things are said to me and to other people all the time. Sexual harassment and assault are just rampant in this industry, and racism and homophobia are rampant as well." /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23207728/HAGS_JJW_2.jpg) There was a dissonance to being in such grueling work environments, when Lindsley's own relationship with food had always been so joyful. But restaurant work wasn't all downside. "Telly and I met working at [my] first restaurant job, and Telly was well into her career. I had no idea how much of an accomplished chef she was." Working together at Kimball House in Decatur, Georgia in 2015, they became inseparable. A few years later, before the pair made their way to New York, they worked together again at another Atlanta-area restaurant where Justice was chef de cuisine, and Lindsley was bar manager. "We realized that we wanted to do something creative together and cultivate a space. And we had gone through a couple of different ideas in our years together, both romantically and also working together." Before the pandemic hit, Lindsley was working at Aldo Sohm, the wine bar connected to New York's three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin, and was on track to join the restaurant's team of sommeliers. Justice was splitting her time between the kitchens of Michelin-starred Contra and its offshoot, Wildair. But as the virus spread and the restaurant industry all but shut down in New York City, both Lindsley and Justice found themselves out of work. The longer they were out of work, the harder it was for either to imagine going back to the status quo that had defined their lives in hospitality. It was at this point they asked themselves what it would look like to stop being so angry all the time. What would it take? The answer to that question is HAGS. The restaurant's name is a nod to "old haggard witchy women," its capitalization both a promise to be loud and unapologetic in everything it does, and a goofy acronym recalling an old-school yearbook sign-off: Have A Great Summer! "As queers in this industry, we have barely survived by being quiet and invisible," says Justice of the campy, head-scratcher name. "We had to resist that urge to be small and inoffensive with our first restaurant if it were ever going to be a meaningfully safe space." Justice and Lindsley always knew that when they opened their first restaurant, it would have some queer sensibilities, but until the pandemic, Justice says, "we didn't imagine that it was going to lead with queerness, until we decided to center ourselves in our work. And then it was a no-brainer: This is going to be queer first, restaurant second. It has to be." There are all sorts of blueprints for opening a new restaurant, but when it comes to distilling the spirit of queerness — and everything that means to Justice and Lindsley — into four walls and a kitchen, HAGS is in uncharted territory. There's a lot the couple know they don't want their restaurant to be. After dedicating so much of their lives to kitchens and hospitality, Justice and Lindsley have come to hate the way rigid fine dining restaurants forced them to shrink, the way restaurants claim to evoke the spirit of "dinner parties" but are so often cold and formal affairs, the strict hierarchies and the rampant abuse. When the pair launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the opening of their own "community driven tasting menu restaurant," their description of HAGS barely sounded like a restaurant at all. "How often have you felt unseen, uncared-for, intimidated, or uninvited in a finer dining environment? At HAGS, we are on a quest to make you feel comfortable, celebrated and nourished AS YOU ARE," reads the fundraising page. The campaign describes a restaurant that hosts after-hour parties "just 'cause," offers wall space to a rotating cast of artists to display their work, and encourages people to get up from their tables and dance if the music hits right. As HAGS comes together, the couple is focused on how diners will feel when they step inside. "I hope that people are like, 'You know what, I'm going to bring my own fried chicken for the staff to eat,'" says Justice, of a kitchen culture where interactions between staff and customers go beyond turning out plates of food for strangers to eat. "I want to encourage people to make the space their dinner party, not our dinner party. We're just there to facilitate it." On Sundays, meals will be offered on a sliding scale, for those who may otherwise be excluded from the luxury of fine dining. The menu will be flexible, and Justice and Lindsley will welcome diners with pretty much any dietary restrictions. Recipes from each night's service will be shared online, or printed out and tucked into the pockets of happy guests as they head back into the bustle of the East Village. And the staff will get comfortable, too, sitting down while they take orders, dancing through the dining room as music blares through the speaker system. In an industry where toughness and the ability to work grueling hours through discomfort and exhaustion are still seen, largely, as positive attributes, prioritizing the emotional and physical comfort of kitchen and front-of-house workers is a radical idea in and of itself. If all of this sounds more like a chaotic, jubilant celebration than a fine dining restaurant, that's exactly what Justice and Lindsley are going for. HAGS is set to be less tasting counter, more queer potluck, orchestrated by a gaggle of friends and lovers, artists and cooks. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23207738/HAGS_JJW_8.jpg) Where some new restaurants might turn to iconic chefs or restaurants of the past for inspiration, the potlucks that shaped so much of both Lindsley and Justice's lives as young queer people are the closest thing to a North Star that they have. "In some ways potlucks, in our experience, were these moments for queer elders to show queer babies in the community: 'This is what the community looks like. This is what the community does. We are here to nourish ourselves. We're here to share skills. We're here to have a good time because queerness doesn't have to be about suffering,'" says Justice. "We just kept coming back to this memory of being 20 years old, and the vulnerability of cooking something that means something to you, for people that you love." These events may have revolved around food, but they were rarely about food. "The potluck was always about just grabbing what you've got in the kitchen, turning it into some kind of mush, it can be delicious, it can be shit, we can throw it into the trash and totally ignore that it happened," says Justice, "but we're going to come together and we're going to talk and we're going to gossip and we're going to lift each other up and we're going to cry and we're going to lip sync Cher, and it's going to be transformative." Of course, there are limits to how much a restaurant can feel like a potluck or a dinner party. But as the pair remake 163 First Avenue, the ethos of the queer potluck, in particular, is driving more than any specific culinary point of view. It's shaping how they dream of a restaurant where queerness comes first. In a recent Instagram Q&A — which Justice and Lindsley host most weeks as they prepare to open — they received a version of the same question that they've been asked over and over: What will be on the menu at HAGS? It's a simple question, one most restaurateurs would be happy to answer. But the question feels antithetical to what the couple want HAGS to be: Food will be central to what HAGS does, but the same unseriousness that made those queer potlucks feel so free and accepting will be at the core of every dinner service. Even when pressed by the most persistent journalist, the couple is hesitant to offer dish descriptions. Instead, Justice and Lindsley bubble over with excitement as they describe a menu constantly evolving in response not just to the seasons, but to the wants and needs of customers, and the energy of the staff. That means dinner offerings could change any given night, when a party is gluten free, or completely sober, or has three children that won't stop crying and think the fish course looks gross. "You can make somebody's life better with food," says Justice. "You can have somebody come in, sit down, eat your food, and leave feeling phenomenal. That's what food is supposed to do." The best way to understand what kind of food HAGS will serve is, like so much about the restaurant, wrapped up in queerness. "My identity, of living in this world in a trans body, leads me towards needing to question and investigate all dogmatically held beliefs in the kitchen," says Justice. "Where somebody might just automatically sear something, I want to question whether it would be more 'me' to steam it, to be gentle with it, to cook something slowly. What if I slowed down how quickly I work?" /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23208952/HAGS_JJW_3.jpg) /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23208954/HAGS_JJW_4.jpg) As she and Lindsley start to hire staff for the restaurant, Justice is thinking about how she'll convey this cooking philosophy to other cooks as she teaches them to make each dish. "These are things that are important to me, and I'm willing to educate anybody, but it's so much easier to just start with somebody that is already of that mindset and maybe even challenges me to go further." It's that second part — finding fellow cooks and front-of-house staff that understand the experience of queerness, and how it relates to food — that takes time, care, and patience. There is a distinction, Justice and Lindsley have noticed as they begin to look for staff, between a business that employs queer people, and one that feels intrinsically queer. As the concept of the queer restaurant has gained prominence in the last few years, there's been a surge of new restaurants where queer cooks and waitstaff take center stage, where the music is strange and eclectic and undeniably gay; where, perhaps, glowing disco balls turn lazily overhead. And while all of those choices can create a beautiful, energetic experience, and one that reads as unquestionably queer, Justice and Lindsley believe restaurants have to do more. "The queer restaurant community has just exploded in the past year. And I think that that's fantastic," says Justice. But while she's noticed plenty of queer-led restaurants working hard to staff their teams with talented queer people, she's seen less energy dedicated "to really com[ing] together to figure out what our practices are, what our bylaws are, how we're going to take care of our community with our space, and what it looks like to uplift each other when we can't hire everybody." In short, how can a queer restaurant be more than just another buzzy place to eat or drink? How can a queer restaurant serve to improve the lives of its diners and its staff alike? As much time as Lindsley and Justice spend thinking about how to operate HAGS outside of the hierarchies and constraints of traditional restaurant culture, there are still bricks to lay, and unglamorous work to be done: chairs to buy, walls to paint, kitchen equipment to source from the restaurant supply, and about a thousand permits to sign and date and file before their little restaurant on First Avenue feels the way they want it to. As they lay out the blueprint for their restaurant, they're also drawing out plans for a less concrete sort of construction. For Lindsley and Justice, opening HAGS is as much about creating a path for a new sort of business — a non-restaurant, if you will — as it is about serving excellent food and packing the house each night. That means ensuring that, while there aren't a lot of other restaurants that model themselves after queer potlucks, or refuse to share their menus before opening, HAGS doesn't remain one-of-a-kind for long. "We shouldn't be the first [of any kind of restaurant]," says Lindsley. "We don't want to be the only one. So we're going to give as much information to everybody as possible, so that other folks can do what they will with it, maybe even open their own restaurant." When Justice thinks about making the building blocks of this business available to others who want to follow suit, it's not just about sharing her philosophy with other queer aspiring restaurant owners or making a tiny 20-seat fine dining restaurant feel like a family affair. She's intent on sharing her recipes with diners at HAGS, and on the web, leaving few mysteries as to the food she cooks each night at her restaurant. If you want to learn how to cook a favorite dish from your meal at HAGS, Justice wants to make that possible. "When I think about the existential dilemma of being passionate about food, but being trans or being disabled and not having the emotional endurance to withstand a decade in this industry, in fine dining kitchens, it is really hard," says Justice. Though Justice's own identity is intrinsically tied to her experience working in traditional fine dining kitchens, she spends a lot of time thinking about a world where queer people with ambitions to cook and feed others don't feel a pressure to trace her steps. "I don't want anybody else to have to go through what I did. So if they can learn from my recipes and not be in those spaces, that's what I want. Whatever we have, we want to make sure that everybody can have it, too." Justin J Wee is a Brooklyn-based photographer, and needs his fries to be crispy. |
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