The slogan of one of Monica Pope’s two Houston restaurants is “Beaver’s — Just South of Hooters.”
Follow my 15-day road trip exploring the Queer South at BuzzFeed.com/QueerSouth.
When Monica Pope confesses, "it's taken me 20 years in this business to do everything that I was afraid of," you can't help but wonder what — if anything — there is left for her to fear. She's opened six restaurants, won countless awards, competed on Top Chef, and she makes time to write a blog that emphasizes the importance of "eating where you live."
Her career as a chef and restaurateur has been driven by a goal that is both simple and audacious: "changing the way Houston eats." In a state known for bragging about its barbecue and commitment to the virtues of fried...everything, the chef, an out lesbian who speaks in enthusiastic paragraphs, has had her work cut out for her.
I sat down with her at her signature restaurant, Sparrow Bar & Cookshop, just outside downtown Houston, and we chatted about her stunning success as well as the challenges she's faced along the way.
Via: Scotty Baty/Buzzfeed
Honestly, it looks like Houston is well on its way to become the next San Francisco.
Monica Pope: We're trying to shout it to the world. The last few years we were like, "OK, we're sick of this." We're cool, the people are cool here, it's about the people. All of us can do our thing, entrepreneurially, creatively, artistically, whatever. It's like, this is the Houston that we know. And friends that came that aren't necessarily from here either but have been here and start their art groups here or started their business here, it's just like, yeah! This is it!
What's Houston been like for LGBT business owners?
MP: Murky, at best. I mean, you know, 20 years ago, I remember — I won't say the name — but I worked for somebody here, and I remember them — it was odd, this woman who was 28 was opening this very dramatic restaurant in the heart of Montrose and doing food that nobody even realized was food, and they labeled it "lesbian cuisine," and I thought (snorts). Like, oh, that's how we're going to — I've seen a correlation all my career of what I started 20 years ago. So the story goes, I was a teenager, and a friend of mine said, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "I'm going to open a restaurant and change the way Houston eats." [I was a] crazy 17-year-old, swam all my life — don't ask me why I suddenly woke up and had to change the way Houston eats, but that's what I said, and I've been trying to figure it out for about 33 years, cooking in this business and these restaurants for about 20 years. And for them to immediately label those people that I worked for and I knew, Houston, my hometown, to call it lesbian cuisine... Wow.
Twenty years ago, they thought I was part of a cult [because of my emphasis on eating and using local ingredients]. Ten years ago, they were like, "Y'know, Monica..." Five years later, ten years later, they're like, "Oh. We got it." But you don't realize I've been dealing with all the prejudice and all the sexism and racism and everything just because you correlate, and I even tell people, "Look, you don't understand." People consume this. It's not a shirt that you put on and decide you look pretty neat in it; they're eating this. They actually think — and I saw it in a blog — they actually think if they eat it, they could go gay. If they walk through that door, they could go gay.
