TELLY JUSTICE

This chef serves soul-shaking, ever-evolving, delicious food in the most joyful and inclusive experience in NYC for everyone—regardless of identity, income, or dietary restrictions.

- KAT KINSMAN

TELLY JUSTICE IS SO PUNK ROCK, she can put glitteron a pink, vegan cinnamon bun at Sunday brunch and make it feel like an act of sweet rebellion. As she was growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, her parents amplified her dreams of being a drummer by plugging themselves into the social power grid that surrounded their kid. “They’d come to the shows, run the door, and buy pizza for the kids at the show,” she says. “That’s where I get my hospitality, from this feeling of fostering space.”

HAGS

New York City

Kohlrabi-wrapped poached leeks with cacaonib chile crisp and red onion-fermented coconut soubise, topped with confit egg yolk and nasturtiums at HAGS in New York City

There may be no more hospitable place in America than the 18-seat HAGS in Manhattan’s East Village. Justice and her business and life partner, the restaurant’s beverage director Camille Lindsley, met while working at Kimball House restaurant in Decatur, Georgia. The two found what Justice describes as “kismet” in their interests: first hanging out at a Godflesh concert when none of their colleagues cared for industrial metal music, then spending all their free time together as friends, and finally going on a date that ended with a kiss in a cemetery. They discussed starting a band (Lindsley plays bass), but as hospitality veterans, they found harmony instead in their vision of what a fine-dining restaurant could and should be.