Best Gay Restaurants in America for First Dates, Nightlife & Disco Fries | LGBTQ+ Dining Guide for Romantic Evenings & Late-Night Fun

This is a Featured Preorder* for a book that will be published June 3, 2025

This is what the publisher tells us about this book:

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.
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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.

Hardcover. Color photographic insert.

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