(bell rings)
- What do you think the first ticket's gonna be, Bill?
- Breakfast plates.
- Breakfast plates?
I think it's gonna be porridge,
breakfast sandwich, Dutch baby.
- [Libby] Historically, queer people and young queer people
have been marginalized, and kicked out of their homes,
and maybe they live in New York City
because they were stifled in their small towns.
They can come to MeMe's,
a place that is open about being queer.
It's not a night club.
It's not somewhere where you have to get drunk.
It's a place where you can go
and have a piece of meatloaf and be amongst your people.
That is an incredible feeling
to make somebody feel at home and warm.
Hey, good morning.
Bill and I met while working at a bakery in Brooklyn.
I was decorating cakes and Bill was running the bakery
and the two of us quickly became fast friends
and relied on each during work,
and started throwing dinner parties together.
I think that Bill and I started a business together
because we really were able to work together,
we wanted to have something of our own.
- [Bill] There were many times when we were
in the process of opening MeMe's
that we looked at each other and thought,
"This might not happen."
I mean, opening a restaurant is not easy.
We are two people who have a lot of experience
in hospitality and come from hospitality backgrounds,
but in no way, shape, or form
had we built an entire restaurant.
- The week or two before we opened,
I was definitely questioning if I even knew how to cook.
We really wanted to create a personal restaurant.
The food is a reflection of us,
the atmosphere is a reflection of us.
That's what we set out to do here,
was to make really awesome food
in a really awesome environment
that just felt like going to your friend's house.
- I call myself like his junior baker.
- [Bill] You were baking before this.
- I wasn't baking batch biscuits though
at seven in the morning.
It is nice to just kind of get a moment with just us.
It's like a date night, but you're like
a little hungover maybe.
I'm speaking for myself.
- It's a rare day that you're not here at all.
But then when we leave and when we go home,
we try and keep it a little bit separate.
Coming out as a business with MeMe's, what a funny thing.
MeMe's as a gay space was never a conscious thought
or even a big discussion with us.
Libby and I had just signed the lease on this space
when we did an interview with Jarry Magazine.
- We were outed.
- During that interview, I said,
"MeMe's is a very, very gay restaurant," which is true.
- Yep.
- We never really expected to frame our restaurant
in this idea of queerness.
- [Libby] No.
- [Bill] It was just sort of something
that we had assumed was--
- [Libby] Gonna be back-of-house.
Got picked up by a lot of people.
It helped us sort of say,
"Yes, we are presenting queer hospitality.
This is what we think queer hospitality is."
The aesthetic of our food is very much ours
and when we say that, we also say that means our family,
and our background, and our current sort of chosen family.
We also wanted to create food that felt familiar
and had flavors that people would identify with.
I mean our flavors are classic but just queered a little.
- Or a little tangy.
We have a very concise menu, so we sell a lot
of everything that we have.
The dish that I really love out of the brunch menu,
is the chili oil fried egg.
I met my girlfriend at the restaurant.
She was a regular, and she came to brunch.
And I think she probably ordered the fritos
or the chicken biscuit or something first.
But her friend ordered the chili oil fried egg,
and she ended up eating the entire thing.
Bill loves chicken cutlets.
- [Bill] I love chicken cutlets.
- [Libby] So I'd ask him, oh, "What do you want
to eat for dinner tonight?" when we were hanging out.
He'd be like "Well, yeah, I kinda want a chicken cutlet."
And so it became this thing where I was like okay,
"Well what can I do to the chicken cutlet?"
And so now, we always have a rotating chicken cutlet
on the menu.
I often think about how lovely it is
to have an open dining room for anybody
that wants to come and feel comforted.
I think the coming out process was really easy.
I am proud of us and humbled and honored
that we get to be in this space
and recognized for being queer.
And because the space is a reflection of us,
our queer identity is important to us,
and so it's a queer space.
- [Bill] There are so many people
in food who are saying, "Hey, I'm a queer person in food.
This is my community, these are my people."
- [Libby] I think that we as queer business owners
for the future of our business
and for the future of queer food
and queer hospitality in general,
we want to be leaders and lead by example
in the way that we approach our staff.
I think that right now everybody is very aware
of the way that restaurants and kitchens have been run.
Before I was baking, I was working in kitchens
that were run by very old school,
traditional, chauvinistic men.
I think one of the things that pushed me into baking
was because the environment just felt so toxic.
I loved cooking so much, but I couldn't understand
why going to work everyday was so hard.
I couldn't understand why the food industry
had to be like that, and I didn't think it had to.
- [Bill] Like the team that we have been lucky enough
to build here is the best part of running this restaurant.
- [Libby] Absolutely.
- [Bill] And it makes me and us want
to come to work everyday.
- [Libby] Even before we opened this restaurant,
I was always looking for a place
that was either run by queer people or run by women.
- Welcome back Clarissa.
- Yes, welcome back Clarissa.
- Does anybody have anything that they need before service?
Bill and I are doing service today so...
- Y'all are on your own.
You're behind the bar, you're on the floor.
I have gotten so much back from hiring people
from being a boss, from being a manager.
And so being able to interact with people...
And people show up on time because
they're not miserable to go to work,
has been so rewarding for me.
- I don't think that we would have the return guests
in the way that we do or the neighborhood feel
if it weren't for the staff that we have.
They're really the people who kind of
make the vibe of the place.
- [Libby] We have regulars--
- [Bill] We have so many regulars.
- [Libby] But we also see so many new people here everyday.
And that makes it feel special and different,
even if the food is the same.
- I actually had somebody today say to me
on the way out the door, "I love coming to your restaurant
because I leave so happy."
- Every day I feel shocked that we run a restaurant
that people like, they keep coming back to.
That people get what we're doing
without us having to say explicitly what we're doing.
What's the modern queer space
where we don't have to hide after our day jobs.
We don't have to go to a bar that has some sort of name
that you think might sound gay.
It's about people being proud of their identity
and being comfortable in a space
that's also proud of their identity.
- That's what MeMe's is for a lot of people I feel.
- Right.