01 June 2026
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Pride Month is a celebration of identity, visibility and community, as well as an opportunity to recognize the people shaping restaurant culture from within. Across the country, LGBTQIA+ chefs in the MICHELIN Guide bring their personal histories, chosen families and lived experiences into the dining room, influencing not only what ends up on the plate, but also how restaurants operate behind the scenes.
For some, that means reclaiming cultural traditions and elevating cuisines that have long been overlooked in fine dining. For others, it’s about creating kitchens where queer staff members feel safe, supported and seen. Whether through Haitian rice and beans served on fine French china, Central Texas barbecue prepared by a queer-led team or Thai cooking in Nashville informed in part by drag culture, these chefs show how identity can inform cuisine in ways both subtle and profound.
This Pride Month, the MICHELIN Guide spotlights chefs whose restaurants reflect culinary talent, resilience, creativity and the importance of building spaces where people can fully be themselves.
Ali Clem
la Barbecue
Austin, Texas
Ali Clem grew up in Texas but didn’t really grow up eating barbecue. Now, at la Barbecue in Austin, she’s known for preparing meat Central Texas-style, including black pepper-crusted brisket, pork ribs and housemade sausages, aka the “Texas Trinity.”
While her brisket is most popular, Clem is keen on the sausages, which she tinkers with often. “I really love the creativity of sausage. I love that you can kind of put anything into them and I get a little obsessed with that at times,” says Clem. Her favorite is the turkey, a tender and smoky link made with garlic, salt and pepper.
Clem didn’t set out to become a pitmaster. Her late wife, Leanne Mueller, came from one of Texas barbecue’s most well-known families: Louie Mueller Barbecue. When Mueller’s brother, John, was opening a food truck and needed help, Clem — then working as a bartender — stepped in.
“I really kind of fell in love with it. It just kind of consumed me. It was something that I had never done before and really excited me. I'm a very meticulous person to begin with, so I really love the ins and outs of barbecue.”
As a queer woman working in a field long dominated by men, Clem is aware of barbecue’s stereotypes, but they never discouraged her.
“Barbecue has its stigma, right? It's like you sit and drink beer and cook meat for long hours, and usually it's tied to the man's job, which is historically how it's been,” she says.
“But I've never been one to do what, quote-unquote, ‘women do.’ So when coming into barbecue, I didn't really look at it as, ‘Oh my God, you know, I'm a woman in this man's world.’ I looked at it as, you know, I really enjoy this. I love being creative. I love the work ethic that has to go into it.”
Over time, Clem has built a close-knit, largely queer team at la Barbecue — not by design, she says, but through shared chemistry and trust. “We all just work very well together and they’re fantastic. They're my family.”
As for celebrating Pride Month in Texas barbecue country, Clem approaches it with humor.
“I always say that they chose June for Pride Month because it's hotter than hell, and that's where they think we're all going.”
Gregory Gourdet
Maison Passerelle
New York, New York
At his New York City restaurant Maison Passerelle, located inside Printemps (the French luxury department store), Chef Gregory Gourdet brings together French, African and Asian influences. But at the core of much of his cooking — across his seven restaurant concepts in New York City and Portland, Oregon — is the cuisine of the African diaspora, especially the Haitian food that connects him to his identity as a queer Black man.
For Gourdet, Haitian food is both deeply personal and long overdue. After nearly three decades of cooking, he realized he hadn’t spent enough time learning about his own culture. That shift led him back to family recipes and to his mother, who taught him the dishes that now anchor parts of his menus.
One of the clearest expressions of that journey is diri ak sos pwa, his mother’s recipe for rice and beans and one of Haiti’s most foundational dishes. To make it, red kidney beans are simmered with black pepper, habanero, onion, garlic, scallions and clove; half are pureed into a sauce while the rest remain whole for texture. The finished bean sauce is spooned over steamed jasmine rice.
“It’s very interesting to be serving Haitian rice and beans with vintage Christofle silverware that was made for royalty hundreds of years ago,” says Gourdet. “And to pair that with vintage French china is really kind of like my wink, wink, nod, nod to this food deserving the place that it's always deserved on the best table.”
The idea of elevating cuisines and communities historically left out of fine dining runs through Gourdet’s work. As a queer Black chef, he draws direct connections between the histories of perseverance and resistance within both Black and queer communities, and those experiences shape how he leads his restaurants. He has also been informed by one of his mentors.
“I was able to spend my formative years at Jean-Georges and now because there’s so much discussion about treatment in fine-dining spaces, I feel lucky because I was always nurtured,” he says.
Now leading his own teams, Gourdet is intentional about creating restaurants where people feel welcomed and protected, especially LGBTQIA+ staff members.
“We have a lot of LGBTQIA+ team members on both coasts and I want them to feel that they are working in a safe space,” he says. “Silently, without promotion, I’ve attracted a strong queer team and that feels really, really good.”
For Gourdet, that sense of acceptance is inseparable from both his leadership style and his identity. “Acceptance has always been a part of my journey and how I want to manage,” he says, “because of my own experience as a queer Black man.”
Arnold Myint
International Market
Nashville, Tennessee
International Market’s Arnold Myint was born into the first family to bring Asian food and cuisine to Nashville — back in the early 1970s. His mother Patty, who was Thai, missed the food of her homeland.
She and her husband opened International Market, giving the popular Southern meat-and-three concept (a meal of one protein and three sides) a Thai spin: rice with fixings called khao kaeng. The accessible, cafeteria-style steam table format provided diners an opportunity to ease their way into authentic Thai food.
“I was raised in those walls,” says Myint. “There weren’t many people like me growing up in Nashville. I was Thai-Burmese, flamboyant and sassy.”
International Market was more than just a restaurant. “My mother and my father built walls that were a safe haven for an entire community of artists, misfits and queer people,” he says. “My parents were freaking fabulous.”
A competitive ice skater and performer, Myint eventually moved to New York City, where he first worked front-of-house in restaurants before gravitating toward the kitchen. “After work, I would go and hang out with the kitchen guys. I was used to sitting on the stairs eating a staff meal out of a cup,” he says. It was then that he realized he wanted to work in a kitchen.
“It clicked,” he says of culinary school. “I was literally in my element from the first day.” He went on to work for several years with Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York, drawn to the chef’s ties to Thailand and the royal family there. ”I really felt a connection to him,” he says.
Both of Myint’s parents passed away after COVID, and International Market closed. But after prompting by his sister, Anna, the siblings opted to reopen International Market with a new vision. “I initially thought I was going to just recreate Mom's dishes,” says Myint. “But Nashville had changed. The palate of the community had changed. There was opportunity there.”
International Market now has a new identity. “It's almost two restaurants in one,” says Myint. “During the day it's still our mom's steam table, then at night, it flips. At five o'clock, it’s a full restaurant service: showtime, lights down, music up, servers in place.”
Myint’s cuisine blends a Thai point of view with local sensibilities, offering a unique taste of Tennessee and Thailand. He sources ingredients regionally while channeling the balance of sweet, salty, spicy and sour that defines Thai cuisine.
One example is his waterfall beef salad. “Because I'm from Tennessee, we do a five spice-palm sugar-dark soy braise, and then we smoke the beef it as if it’s barbecue,” he says, “But my little secret is that before we serve it in the cold salad with all the mint and herbs, we flash fry it so it has a crispy, sugary exterior.”
The queer and drag communities have also helped shape his approach to food. “We make things work with what we’ve got,” he says. “That community taught me how to celebrate every product and turn each one into something fabulous.”
“I was Miss Gay America and the way I cook in Tennessee now is a lot like an aspiring drag queen,” he says. ”We're very resourceful, and we make it work with what we've got.”
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Hero image: Chef collage - Chef Gregory Gourdet © Heather Willensky/Maison Passerelle | Chef Ali Clem © la barbecue | Chef Arnold Myint © International Market
