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.
Piepenburg is most animated when fueled by nostalgia, such as in his chapters on 24-hour diners and the 'golden age' of gay restaurants—a period he identifies as stretching from the late 1960s to the aughts—and when he ponders how to feel about dining at establishments not expressly meant for him. This invites an inevitable further question: How might lesbians or trans people capture the pleasure of their own establishments? Any topical survey will wrestle with the subjective nature of queer belonging, but in Dining Out, Piepenburg’s rigorous research and sensitive reporting are vital to the book’s impact ... Puts the sensual and the sensory at the fore, and it pulsates with hunger for what’s possible when queer life and expression is examined through food. And at a moment when queer and trans people are increasingly under attack, the subject of quiche again becomes a poignant call to action.
In one of my favorite chapters of the book, Piepenburg seeks to confirm whether or not a riot of flying coffee cups and glazed pastries occurred at a Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles about ten years before the Stonewall uprising ... Though Piepenburg himself does not confirm the occurrence of this burning mystery, he highlights two big ideas. The first is that gay people have always resisted bigotry and homophobia, even in the face of extreme danger and brutality. The second is that much of the early resistance has been stifled and muted ... Dining Out is at once a thoroughly researched investigation of gay restaurants and their impact on the resistance movements of the past and present, as well as a dedication to the queer community that Piepenburg holds dear. His experience as a journalist is evident in the piece’s structure and voice, but so is his reverence for all those who have been othered in spaces where they should be welcomed ... Though the question of 'what makes a gay restaurant?' remains fairly subjective, one thing is for sure: a gay restaurant is a place you want to be.
Chapters graft careful reporting with his own running commentary, at turns cheeky and poignant and angered by the tenuous state of gay rights and acceptance ...
What strikes me most about Piepenburg’s frame of reference is how explicitly and organically he twins the subjects of dining and sex ... The approach in Dining Out succeeds in its matter-of-factness ... Of course, the release of...Piepenburg’s book was planned for visibility during Pride month. [Its] merits, individual and collective, make for absorbing, enlightening reading far beyond 30 days of designated LBGTQ recognition.
