An Experiment in Queering Fine Dining, at HAGS

Determining whether the experiment succeeds is, of course, a matter of perspective, mine being that of a cis hetero white woman. I imagine, and I hope, that Justice, a trans woman, who has said that she’s never felt completely comfortable in a restaurant kitchen, has created a working environment that corrects for that. The front-of-house staff, led by Lindsley, is emphatically warm and welcoming.

The possibilities for exploring queerness through food are rich. One of the unifying principles of MeMe’s, a now closed queer diner in Crown Heights, was camp, which resulted in some incredibly creative and wonderful comfort food. At HAGS, the menu, offered as a three- or five-course tasting, leans cerebral. My meal there last September began with a delicious Homo Hand Salad: a painstaking arrangement of crunchy, salted leaves of crimson endive, to be dipped in a creamy, pale-pink breakfast-radish vinaigrette seasoned with pickled quince, rose water, lime zest, hibiscus, and umeboshi.

A dish of beets and radicchio is available as part of a three- or five-course tasting menu.

I was similarly impressed by a ripe, sweet end-of-season beefsteak tomato, blanketed in a glossy green fava emulsion, drizzled in sesame oil, and topped with gooseberries, perilla and shiso leaves, and sesame seeds. The salad and the tomato dish both happened to be vegan. Inasmuch as you can define queer cuisine, veganism plays a role, at least in part as a rejection of the status quo. A queer friend of mine put it more bluntly: “Queer people are obsessed with zoodles.”

Indeed, there were zoodles (spiralized zucchini) on HAGS’s September menu, though they were made from avocado squash and were not vegan, topped with lump crab and Urfa-chili-marinated stracciatella cheese. That composition worked beautifully. I can’t say the same about a dish I tried more recently, which somehow managed to convey the limits of veganism while incorporating both meat and dairy—roasted Hasselback rutabaga, topped with a confusing mix of beer cheese, collard chips, house-made Worcestershire sauce, pancetta, and dates.