For restaurants in New York City, June typically marks the start of the slow season, when locals flee the five boroughs for cooler pastures. Yet for HAGS—often described as the city’s first “queer fine-dining” restaurant—it’s a month of celebrating both LGBTQ+ Pride and two years of successful operation.
“It always feels that to make it to two years is to make it, period,” says owner and wine director Camille Lindsley, who opened HAGS in 2022 with her partner, chef Telly Justice. The couple met in 2015 while working at Kimball House in Decatur, Georgia. A few years later, they made the big jump to New York City, where they did time at notable destinations including Aldo Sohm Wine Bar, Contra and Wildair. Opening HAGS was a way for them to return to the relationship-building power—and the playfulness—they love about food. (The name of the restaurant doubles as a wink to hags, an essential part of the queer lexicon, and to “Have a Great Summer,” the message ubiquitously scribbled in the back of high school yearbooks.)
A student of Greek mythology, Lindsley takes inspiration from those wild and “wacky” stories in her style of hospitality. “You never know who the dinner guest in front of you is,” she says. “They could be like Athena in disguise. I never want to assume anything about them. I’ve quite literally met guests who have changed the course of my life just by adopting this attitude.”
To Lindsley, queer culture is defined by a shared sense of the importance of earthly delights and “the things that we feel make life worth living.” While the wine list at HAGS spotlights stellar producers from Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux, it also highlights smaller winemakers and regions like Bierzo, Jura and California’s Los Olivos, and there’s a section dedicated to queer winemakers. The couple also makes an effort to serve their community through “Pay What You Can Sundays,” a weekly à la carte menu where anyone can grab a bite, without the stuffiness and rigidity of a tasting menu.
“No one ends up at HAGS by accident,” says Lindsley. “To make their experience something special, that’s what gets me going.”
Lindsley sat down with Wine Spectator editorial assistant Julia Larson to talk about her early lessons in tasting, queer food, her favorite places to drink wine and more.
How did you decide to learn more about wine and become a sommelier? Did you have a “eureka” moment?
I always like to joke that there’s a pretty ironclad pipeline between the English major and working in the beverage industry. I fell into working in restaurants after graduating college and returning home to Atlanta. I started working at Kimball House after an odd series of events. I was dining there, and I realized that I had met one of the owners at a death metal concert a couple of weeks before, and we hit it off.
I remember so vividly tasting a Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis. The lights just went off for me. I didn’t know Chardonnay could taste like that. At that point, I was a baby in the industry. I was very goth and would not drink anything but red wine. But that Chablis was life-changing.
When you moved to New York City, you started working at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar [from the Grand Award–winning wine director of Le Bernardin]. How did that experience shift how you approach wine?
I learned a lot working with Aldo. One was the importance of tasting—I tasted a massive amount of wine. Some things are hard to teach in words but are incredible to learn through tasting. When you open a case of wine and you get to taste the minute bottle variations, it’s some of the best training for your palate that you can get.
I also got to taste some incredible wines that anyone is lucky to taste within their lifetime. Frequently, Aldo would spirit away a couple of bottles that guests ordered off the list at Le Bernardin. I remember tasting a 1952 Gattinara, which was one of the most intense and feral wines I’ve ever tasted. I had the pleasure of selling from Le Bernardin’s list a couple of times—you feel like a kid in a candy store.
Something that I learned from Aldo was the importance of humility as a sommelier. He would always say, “Don’t talk about what you don’t know,” which I still preach as a motto to my staff.
I think there is a lot of poetry in wine. But I think that can lead to a lot of bullshit in wine too. It never feels good to be bullshitting—or to be bullshitted. I liked Aldo’s simplicity. At that point in my career, I was like, “Oh man, okay. If I can’t talk about things I don’t know, what can I talk about?” I think that’s a great way to force yourself to be self-reflective about areas where you need to grow, and also areas where you feel competent.
You've talked about “queering the wine pairing.” What does that look like in practice?
In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of discourse about queerness as identity. But I think something that isn’t spoken about is queerness as a relationship between one thing and another. There’s nothing but relation when you’re talking about pairings: How does this wine relate to this food? I like using wine pairings as a vehicle to make people reconsider what they’re eating. It’s a lot of fun having people question and reconsider things through a great pairing. It’s less about the wine and food and more about how it makes the guest feel. Does it make them question something? I’m all about making people question themselves.
What is one pairing that you think exemplifies that approach?
I have been lucky with my love of dessert wine to have a robust pastry program at HAGS—right now, I have way more dessert wine than I think anyone with an 18-seat restaurant probably should. One thing that comes to mind is an early pairing for this radicchio salad with a rose and radish vinaigrette. Salad is hard to pair with wine because the vinaigrette frequently makes dry, high-acid white wines taste sour. They become a punishment to drink, and not in a fun way. So I ended up pairing the salad with this fun off-dry pear cider from Eric Bordelet. People who had this pairing were saying, “I never thought that I would like something that’s sweet, but I love this.” It brought out a different side of the dish that would’ve been missing without the cider.
You’ve mentioned that HAGS is the first tasting menu ever for some guests. Is there any special approach you take with them?
I always urge the staff to lead with curiosity. Also, a little humor goes a long way. We have these votives on the tables that are little squishy hearts. It is hotly contested whether it’s a heart or a butt—the jury’s still out! But it’s this fun and whimsical element. We also have a funhouse mirror in the bathroom (spoiler alert). It’s just something that helps deflate the pomp and circumstance.
Telly and I had the privilege of trying tasting menus for research and development over the years while creating HAGS. One meal that stuck out to us was at [Award of Excellence winner] Minibar by José Andrés in Washington, D.C. It’s such a whimsical and undeniably fun experience. I’ve never had such incredible service at a restaurant. We really wanted to incorporate some of that element of play in our experience. Why not make it fun?
Over the past two years since HAGS opened, there’s been a lot of discussion about defining queer food. What has been your reaction to that?
Queer food is something that has been around for quite a long time. However, it’s a history that hasn’t been written down in cookbooks. It’s a cuisine style that is still shifting, changing and developing. It’s an exciting moment of history to be a part of, and there are many more people who are putting themselves out as queer chefs.
This isn’t something that’s necessarily new. One of the more frustrating parts of opening HAGS was feeling like this concept was new to a lot of reporters. But there’s Atelier Crenn, there’s [Grand Award winner] the Inn at Little Washington, there are all of these pretty famous queer chefs who have very established fine-dining restaurants. The history goes back even further: James Beard, Jeremiah Tower, the list goes on. There are so many queer chefs, but their work has not been viewed within the specific context of queer food history. These people were seen more as individual chefs. Today, there’s a strong community of folks who are queer and in the culinary industry, and we’re now in the public sphere in a way that feels new and exciting.
What are some of your favorite places to drink wine in New York City?
I’m a huge fan of Somm Time down in the Lower East Side. Maria Rust runs the program. They’re a super accomplished, awesome, badass queer sommelier. I love to hang out at the bar there. The [Award of Excellence–winning] 63 Clinton folks are awesome. I always like to see what wines Mike Tran is pouring. Our neighbor, Ruffian, is always a great spot to hang. I like to see what Patrick Cournot’s got on the list there. Those are three favorites in the neighborhood!
How are your “Pay What You Can Sundays” (PWYCS) going?
We have done PWYCS pretty much every single Sunday since we’ve been open. Opening a fine-dining restaurant has the inevitable effect of gentrifying a neighborhood. But also, you have this missed opportunity of connecting with more people who might want to come into your space but don’t have the means, or don’t want to splurge on a tasting menu.
We wanted to designate one day to have a more casual service style. It’s always been a part of the business model. For both of us, food has always been political. Food can be an undeniable force of good if it’s given to people. We all need to eat three meals a day.
Telly and I are both capricious people; we like to change things up. Having one day a week where we can take a break from the monotony of a tasting menu is something I very much look forward to. For a while we were doing it just for dinner. Recently we shifted to doing a Sunday brunch. It’s been hugely successful. A lot of people come out every week to our PWYCS, and it’s been a fun way to develop relationships with regulars who know us in this particular way. It’s cool to see the crossover of people who come in for dinner coming in the next day for brunch. People can see both sides of HAGS; it’s not like we’re changing who we are.
I’ve noticed that Telly tends to make more comforting food for PYWCS.
Totally. One of the things about opening HAGS is the inevitable question: “What is the food like?” And two years later, we still don’t have a quippy sound bite for that. But I do think Telly’s food feels very intuitive, comforting and emotional—and also fun, playful and cerebral in other ways.
Brunch is certainly about food that is crave-able, and Telly is a rare bird in that she loves to cook brunch. We just put on what’s called a “Joffle”—it’s kind of like a waffle, but you take brioche and fill it with whatever sandwich filling you like, and then you press it together. It’s sort of like if an empanada and a panini had a baby. Right now we have it as a Monte Cristo–style sandwich. Then we put truffles on top, because why not?
What are you drinking right now?
I am always drinking a ton of Furmint. I think it’s such a fun grape—if you’re into Aligoté and Riesling and you haven’t been bit by the Furmint bug, I don’t know what to tell you! Get some crazy Furmint and eat some mapo tofu with it and you’ll be in heaven.
I’ve been drinking a ton of wines from the Willamette Valley recently. There’s a great queer winemaking team called Statera Cellars. Meredith Bell, one of the winemakers, is this incredible genius. She is doing all kinds of things trying to combat smoke taint, like washing wines with spent lees from previous vintages, which seems to work. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before. She has a background in biochemistry. It’s a pure mad scientist kind of genius. We have a beautiful Chardonnay from them by the glass right now that I’m loving to pour for people.
What has it been like developing the queer wines section of the list?
You have to be deliberate in going out and searching for these wines. It’s not as easy as being at a tasting and asking: “Hey! Hey you! Are you a queer?” A lot of it has been drinking wine with other queer somms. Like with queer food, I think queer wine is very much an oral history. There aren’t a ton of things that are written down, and there’s no comprehensive list of all queer winemakers in the world. Maybe one day that will exist. But it’s been an ongoing search. I didn’t add a page of queer-made wines to our list until I had probably 10. Otherwise, why make a page for it? But adding that page to the book felt like a huge achievement.
