From Hard Daddies to Quiche Brunches

A dive into Richmond’s queer food history

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FOOD & DRINK

“Where queer voices cautiously sounded, people sat down together. We ate,” John Birdsall writes in “What Is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution,” a 2025 book exploring the intersection of queer lives and food in the 20th century. “Gay restaurants,” Erik Piepenburg notes in 2025’s “Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants,” are “where social justice is as important as that day’s special soup.”

Richmond’s queer food history is a story of community, resilience and joy. From Prohibition-era cocktail parties to drag brunches, queer Richmonders gathered to eat and drink despite Jim Crow, ABC harassment and HIV/AIDS — feeding themselves and each other as a chosen family.

‘All Four Sexes’ 

In the 1920s, a queer community emerged from Richmond’s literary circles, and what they cooked, ate and poured was central. This group of writers included Hunter Stagg, a “bisexual, alcoholic” editor of The Reviewer described by historian Edgar MacDonald as “handsome in the romantic dark Southern style”; Mary Dallas Street, who openly expressed her sexuality at a time when most elite women, according to historian Elizabeth Scott, “pretended not to know the word”; the “eccentric, secretive, artsy” Mark Lutz, as Frank Tell described him in Richmond Pride in the 1980s; and novelist Ellen Glasgow, who lived with her “friend and secretary,” as a 1950s euphemism put it, Anne Bennett. Their literary connections brought what James Branch Cabell called “authors of all four sexes” to Richmond.

Richmond's Prohibition-era social scene unfolded largely in private homes, at luncheons, teas and illicit cocktail parties. An event such as Stagg’s integrated 1926 soiree for Langston Hughes was nearly unheard of in Jim Crow Richmond. Guests downed “Hard Daddy” cocktails named for Hughes’ poem, accompanied by “crackers with anchovy paste … which can’t properly be called food,” Stagg wrote to Carl Van Vechten. “It was all I could do to buy the whisky, and I simply couldn’t afford anything to eat.”

Van Vechten, a writer, photographer and friend of Stagg and Hughes, became a frequent visitor and helped orchestrate writer Gertrude Stein’s 1935 visit. He and Lutz persuaded Glasgow to host one of her lavish dinners, likened by her nephew Glasgow Clarke, to “old-time Virginia funerals,” as quoted in "Another Note on Ellen Glasgow's Party for Gertrude Stein," The Ellen Glasgow Newsletter 5, with Glasgow “presiding over the lace and silver and porcelain, the shad roe and Smithfield ham.” Stein’s partner and fellow writer, Alice B. Toklas, praised Bennett’s cooking and admired the hot breads. The evening ended with eggnog. These gatherings reveal early foundations of Richmond’s queer culture, placing the city on the literary map and welcoming international authors with the performative campiness of Virginia hospitality.

Out of the House

Queer nightlife grew during World War II. Places such as Marroni’s (later Renee’s, 206 N. Eighth St.) became gay hangouts. Sepul’s (later Broadway Cafe, 1624 W. Broad St.), served “great home-cooked food,” Raymond B. Wallace Jr. said in 2018 to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “They were very, very good to the gay community,” a man called “Mark” recalled in Richmond Pride in  1988. “We had to behave ourselves — no limp wrists flying in the air and no gay talk,” but queer patrons could dance in the back.

Others included the Oriental Restaurant (503 E. Grace St.) serving “Chun Far chow mein,” the News Leader reported, and Grant’s lunch counter (610 E. Broad St.) with “the best milkshakes in the South,” “chicken and dumplings, butterbeans” and “hot spoon bread,” according to a 1991 retrospective in the RTD. These spaces allowed queer people to carve out communities around the table.

Segregation limited access. In 1960, Virginia Union University students staged a sit-in at Grant’s. Queer Black Richmonders “had their own private community,” Mark recalled, but little is documented. Their stories remain largely unrecorded, highlighting the gaps in this history.

Queer and counterculture circles converged at Rathskeller’s (later Dialtone, 3526 W. Cary St.) and Eton’s (938 W. Grace St.), near Richmond Professional Institute, today’s Virginia Commonwealth University. A 1958 ad in RPI’s student newspaper Proscript touted Eton’s “mood lighting,” “200 LP jazz jukebox,” “complete soda fountain” and “tasty short-snax including pizzas.”

By the 1960s, Eton’s had designated sections for gays and lesbians. Writer Tom Robbins recalled his first visit in the Proscript: “The hamburger was horrible and I was too young for beer. … But even then I was fascinated by the place. How are you gonna’ keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Eton’s?”

These were beer joints — it was illegal to serve liquor in Virginia until 1968 — and the commonwealth’s ABC prohibited bars from being a “rendezvous” for homosexuals or employing homosexuals. In 1967, RPI banned students from Eton’s, and ABC revoked its license. Renee’s and Rathskeller’s were shuttered in 1969 (agents reported seeing “men wearing makeup, embracing and kissing,” according to the RTD).

A Sense of Cohesiveness

In the wake of the Stonewall gay uprising in New York City in 1969, Virginia ABC ostensibly stopped enforcing regulations against homosexuals in the 1970s (though they weren’t overturned until 1991). Richmond’s gay bars were dominated by proprietor Leo Koury. “I’ve come to like the kids too much,” Koury told the Virginia Mercury in 1973, “there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them.” Bill Harrison, former executive director of Diversity Richmond, recalled in a 2018 interview with CBS 6, “The community, I think, looked at Leo as a friend. … He provided us with a safe place for the community to gather.”

Koury was also “a known organized crime figure,” according to the FBI. In 1978, he was indicted for what the Richmond Times-Dispatch described as “an elaborate extortion-and-murder plan to take over homosexual nightspots.” In 1977, a man was killed and two others wounded at The Male Box (310 S. Sheppard St.). Apparently, Koury hired the shooter to retake control of the restaurant. Koury went on the lam, evading capture until his death in 1991. He’d been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for 20 years.

The 1980s ushered in an era of bars owned by and for the queer community. Babe’s of Carytown (3166 W. Cary St.), founded in 1978 as a steakhouse, was a mostly lesbian bar by the 1980s, offering specials like “All You Can Eat Spaghetti Dinner (w/ tossed salad and garlic bread),” according to Our Own Community Press in 1991. “We can stand up for our rights,” beloved owner Vicky Hester said in 1992. “Just because we’re gay, you can’t pick on us.” Hester died in 2025.

Babe’s wasn’t Richmond’s first lesbian bar. The Male Box was originally Smitty’s Grill, a women’s softball hangout. “I thought for a long time that all the lesbians in the world played softball,” “Carol” told Bob Swisher of Richmond Pride in 1989. They played in Byrd Park. “As soon as the games were over … everybody would pack in [Smitty’s] and drink beer.”

The food was typical bar fare, and it didn’t matter until it did, as anyone saved by a late-night burger and fries understands. “I don’t know what it was about it, but the homemade ranch and french fries. And they were cheap,” Jen Coley recalls. “Best cheeseburgers you’ve ever had,” says Eddie Tomlin. “More so than not, gay people don’t have a lot of money. Partying was the priority over food.” Tomlin worked coat check at Scandals (2001 E. Franklin St.) and performed in drag as Beverly Carrington — the hand-beaded gown he wore as Miss Scandals 1988 is at The Valentine museum. “In 1988, he checked my coat … and we’ve been together ever since,” Tomlin’s husband, Gary Goldsmith, says.

In 1986, Steve Proffitt told Richmond Pride that he developed Scandals in the early 1980s “to create an environment where people could socialize and have a sense of cohesiveness.” It would be “an entertainment complex.” “The show at Scandals,” Proffitt said, “will actually be the people who go there.” Drag was the main draw, and many prominent performers got their start there, including Victoria C. Snow, still reigning as Richmond’s grande dame of drag.

Scandals served mostly beer and snacky food. Tomlin, Goldsmith and Stacey Guillen, the latter a bartender there (and mother of this article’s co-author, Matthew), remember nachos made with marinara sauce and “pretty much whatever you wanted to put on there.” By its closing in 1991, Scandals became the nucleus of a community that outlasted it. Facebook’s “Scandals Memory Page” has over 1,200 members and is a vibrant record of 1980s queer Richmond.

Gay bars like these were pivotal. “It’s really the first place that every gay or lesbian person feels at home, accepted totally,” Patrick Heck told the RTD in 1992. Pride events began at bars including The Pyramid (1008 N. Boulevard), with “a Pre-Festival Mimosa and Quiche brunch,” and Babe’s, which offered a “buffet brunch with complimentary mimosas.” During the AIDS crisis, gay bars led fundraising efforts. “Food is always donated by the bars,” Heck said. “We’ve fed close to 1,500 people for free.” Babe’s, The Pyramid, Fielden’s (2033 W. Broad St.) and Christopher’s (2811 W. Cary St.) together raised $100,000.

In 1997, Jeff Willis opened Godfrey’s (308 E. Grace St.), reportedly serving Richmond’s first drag brunch. Stacey Guillen bartended there in the late 1990s. Shots like “lemon drops, buttery nipples and B-52s” were popular. “We’d just make stuff up,” Guillen says, including a peanut butter and jelly shot with Frangelico, vodka and cranberry juice. The RTD described Godfrey's menu as “very eclectic,” from stratas and quiches to baked spaghetti and, of course, brunch.

“By the late 1960s,” Birdsall writes, “more and more Americans are doing brunch, but it belongs to the gays. It has cheap booze, hollandaise, quiche.” Piepenburg adds that brunch fosters “a communal feeling.” It became one of the “early goals of gay liberation” — creating family and community with food like “mom used to make.” “During the rest of the week,” Willis says, “we turn into a regular restaurant.”

Godfrey’s and Babe’s remain vital to Richmond’s queer life, connecting generations. Babe’s is now a nationally significant heritage site as one of the last surviving lesbian bars. Richmond was named among the world’s most queer-friendly destinations in Lonely Planet’s LGBTQ+ Travel Guide (2025).

While food wasn’t always the point, it was central. Birdsall writes, “the food itself doesn’t matter as much as the ability to share it in the context of the lives we make for ourselves, and in the power we have to keep the stories of those meals alive.”

This city's queer food history is a potluck of illegal cocktails, back-room homestyle meals, cheap beer and cigarettes on the dance floor, french fries with ranch dressing, stacks of ones for the drag queens, and Jell-O shots in every color of the rainbow. That creativity appears in bartenders’ improvised drinks, in the willingness to “make do” in Hunter Stagg’s anchovy crackers and Scandals’ “whatever-you-wanted-to-put-on-there” nachos. For over a century, queer Richmond’s chosen families sat down together to eat, drink and be themselves.

Stellar Sips

Hard Daddy

Langston Hughes provides the original recipe in a 1926 letter to Carl Van Vechten: “To a glass of whiskey add one-half glass of lemon juice and a half glass of maple syrup + ice and shake. It comes out with a sardonic taste like the Blues, and before the evening was over everybody felt like whooping — and some did!” Try a modern-day modification below; we recommend using less maple syrup and lemon juice since we’re not trying to cover the taste of bad Prohibition-era whiskey.

2 ounces bourbon or rye whiskey

Juice of half a lemon

1/2 to 1 ounce maple syrup

Pour all into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake. Strain over ice or serve up.

Stacey’s Peanut Butter and Jelly Shots

3 ounces Frangelico liqueur

1 1/2 ounces vodka

1 1/2 ounces cranberry juice

Pour all into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake. Strain into four shot glasses. Tip your bartender.