Beyond the spectacle of Butch’s giant toolbox-turned-host stand, servers wearing tool belts instead of aprons, and a delicious menu studded with innuendo-titled items like finger foods and tossed salads, exists an immersive, authentic restaurant celebrating queerness at every opportunity.
For chef Kelly Fields, who felt burnt out and finished with restaurant work just a few years ago, Butch’s at the Crown — a new restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts that’s serving up impeccably cooked local seafood, seasonal ingredients, and Southern-style dishes all while also hosting destination-worthy drag brunches and serving as a gathering place for the queer community — is almost an overcompensation, an unapologetic celebration of their identity, once censored by the culinary community they came up in.
“When people called me butch as a young person, it felt like the most abrasive, most shameful thing I could imagine. I ran from it, hid from it, and fought it,” says Fields. “Reclaiming it is me stepping into myself more than I’ve ever been allowed to be.”
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