My Journey Into the World of Bitch-Themed Restaurants
The waitstaff stands in formation, each balancing a tray with a dozen or so pink shooters. Someone cranks up the late-aughts party anthem “Shots,” and diners put down their forks. Servers sashay through the room, distributing the fruity, spiked elixir. One climbs up on a bussing station and fist-pumps as her table tips back their drinks. It’s Sunday brunch at Bacon Bitch, and everyone is here to party.
Welcome to a weird and wild subgenre of the American restaurant, where “bitch” is the brand identity and customers come in search of a cheeky good time. At least 15 such eateries now operate across 10 states: There’s Bacon Bitch, Biscuit Bitch, Breakfast Bitch, Brunch Bitch, Birria Bitch, not to mention a number of Bitchin’ Kitchens. Notable menu items include the Hot Mess Bitch (a biscuit-gravy-grits combo); a candy-color cocktail poetically known as a Drunk Bitch; the Bitchy Wet Burrito; Side Bitches like fries and extra bacon; Main Bitches like a Bitch.L.T.; and a classic pancake breakfast listed as a Basic Bitch.
Within these dining spaces, every person is also a bitch: servers, bussers, owners, you, your girlfriends, your gay besties, your Trump-voting uncle.
Here’s your omelet, bitch!
Thanks, bitch!
Bacon Bitch restaurant even offers a Lil’ Bitch menu—y’know, for those bitches in training more commonly referred to as children.
As a veteran food writer and a woman in the United States, I had some questions about this delirious hospitality trend. Has “bitch”—that once-potent pejorative that, over the course of the late-20th century became first a rallying cry for aggressive, assertive feminism and then a celebration of the savvy, unapologetic sexually empowered striver—completely lost its disruptive power? And might we consider counter-reclaiming it in 2024, a year when Trump is back on the ballot, Arizona nearly reinstated an 1864 abortion ban, police raided gay bars in Seattle, and so on and so forth?
The need for spaces celebrating rage, dissent, and liberation is feeling particularly urgent right now. Can bitch-themed restaurants serve—literally—the nasty woman who’s ready to burn it all down…after eating a Bitchin’ Chicken sandwich? The person who dares to seek bodily autonomy, actual political representation, and fundamental safety…with a side of hash browns?
To find out, I took an exploratory road trip to some bitch-themed restaurants looking to appeal to women and queer diners in some of the most politically at-risk places in America, pondering it all as I ate overcooked burgers slathered in faux-truffle mayonnaise. And every so often, in the swirl of commodified feminism, when the Aperol in my spritz hit just right, I got a taste of something that made life in the grease fire of America feel a little more palatable.
I HEAR BACON BITCH BEFORE I SEE IT. Music thumps from the restaurant’s al fresco dining patio in South Beach, Florida, on the ground floor of the Essex House boutique hotel. A smiling host greets me at the entrance—“Welcome, bitch!”—as the neon-lit scene swallows me up.
Bacon Bitch’s social media aesthetic (gorgeous ladies, ample cleavage, rounds of cocktails) evokes a Gen Z Hooters. The IRL twist is that the target customers are women, and the experience is tailored to the female gaze…upon herself. I see birthday girls crowned with tiaras and a crew wearing matching orange lycra bodysuits. Did you even brunch if you failed to snap a selfie in front of a mirror that reads “Sexy Bitch”? I can’t resist.
“Bitch is a hook,” owner Peter Bolanis later tells me. “We were trying to figure out what we could do in South Beach to grab attention off the street, get people in, and get them fed.” A self-described mama’s boy sporting six-pack abs, Bolanis hails from the world of high-end nightlife. The vibe is bottle service, shot-o’clock, and sex appeal. Bacon Bitch servers (aka Main Bitches), most of whom are women, wear midriff-baring athleisure uniforms. They’re part restaurant worker, part entertainer, hustling for tips in the tropical heat.
The schtick is a nice distraction from Bacon Bitch’s food. As a professional restaurant-goer, I am obligated to report that an order of avocado toast sports an oxidative brown hue. Slices of fried green tomato drizzled with sticky balsamic glaze scream ’90s catering menu. At nearby tables, guests soldier through rubbery scrambled eggs and leave waffles half eaten.
Nevertheless, business is booming. Bacon Bitch boasts three other Florida locations—in downtown Miami, St. Petersburg, and Orlando—with another in West Palm Beach set to open later this year. Says Bolanis, “We were kind of the pioneers of this bitch revolution, this whole bonanza.”
I have to laugh at the irony of a man getting credit for a female-centric trend he objectively did not originate and with what seems to be minimal revolutionary intent. “This is the way that language works—slang in particular and reclaimed insults,” says feminist linguist Amanda Montell, author of Wordslut. “Black women do it. The queer community does it. Then white women. By the time it gets to white cis straight men, it’s over.”
Indeed, the “bitch” in Bacon Bitch is almost wholly stripped of rhetorical punch. “Bitch” here is fun, fun, fun for everyone—neutral, nonconfrontational, arguably antithetical to bitchiness. When I visited in July, a merch area sold rainbow-splattered Pride tees next to shirts that read “Make Bacon Great Again.”
It all feels especially toothless in light of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s ongoing crusade against trans health care; against asylum seekers; against drag queens; and against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. My inner bitch itches to flip the table. But you know what? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
“YOU CAN SAY THINGS THAT MAKE WOMENT FEEL EMPOWERED, but without giving women the means to make their lives livable, it’s just vibes,” says Aria Halliday, PhD, an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky.
Admittedly, I assumed this was the case at Breakfast Bitch—founded in San Diego, now based in Phoenix—where feminist iconography reigns supreme. Here, the fictional World War II character Rosie the Riveter is a ubiquitous mascot. Rosie appears on hot sauce bottles, on mugs, and on staff uniforms. In an oversized mural outside a bathroom, she clutches her crotch beneath this credo: “A Bitch Gotta Go!”
Breakfast Bitch and Bacon Bitch have a history of beefing. Shortly after Breakfast Bitch’s 2019 founding, Bacon Bitch’s parent company sued for trademark infringement, citing aspects such as branding, recipes, and food categories. A judge tossed out the case for procedural reasons. The dismissal made perfect sense to Breakfast Bitch founder Tracii Hutsona, who denies her restaurant is a copycat. “Our brand’s identity is unique,” she tells Cosmopolitan via email. “We wish all the best to our fellow ‘bitches’ in business!”
Hutsona soon faced more serious legal trouble, however. In 2022, she pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for embezzling more than $1 million from her former employer, TV host Joumana Kidd, money that had helped fund the launch of Breakfast Bitch. A federal judge sentenced Hustona to 51 months in prison, her third stint since the ’90s (past convictions include identity theft and attempted tax evasion, according to court records). Before turning herself in last spring, she sat for a television interview and vowed, “I’ll be back, bitches.”
Since then, Breakfast Bitch has had its struggles. The original San Diego restaurant shut down last fall. The remaining Phoenix location at one point had trouble making rent, according to news reports of an eviction suit brought by the landlord (the landlord voluntarily dismissed the suit, court records show). Hustona says she’s learned a lot during this latest “federal vacation.” She read A Year of Positive Thinking, has been helping her fellow prisoners work on their résumés, and has tutored them in life skills, creative writing, and restaurant operations. “It’s a stark reality that reentering society can be daunting, particularly for women and people of color who have served,” she tells Cosmopolitan.
Earlier this year, Hutsona’s attorney successfully petitioned to pare her sentence to 42 months, noting that full-time employment would allow Hutsona to increase her monthly restitution payments. I message her to ask how she might repair her image once she’s out. “Rehabilitation isn’t the goal; authenticity is,” she explains. “It’s not about changing who I am but continuing to embrace the values that got us here.”
At first it seems like a head-scratching declaration from a woman who stole from another woman and sells customers on female empowerment, which feels like the culinary equivalent of Marjorie Taylor Greene voting against reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. But as I sit in Breakfast Bitch picking at a BLT served on an airport-quality croissant, I wonder if this is an inevitable byproduct of commercial feminism. Maybe a Bitch-a-Rita really can help wash down our betrayals and induce something like self-reflection and growth.
FOR SOME HISTORICALLY MARGINALIZED ENTREPRENEURS, bitch branding is a bastion of genuine self-expression. Brian Duong, founder of Brian’s Bitchin’ Bakery and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, wears an apron that reads “Bitch 1” at his farmers market stand in Houston. His offerings include thick, often-stuffed cookies in flavors inspired by his Vietnamese American upbringing like Saigon Snickerdoodle and Calamansi Crumble and stickers that say, “Mama raised a bitch.”
“Any adjective you put in front of a bitch, l’m that,” he says. “I’m a bad bitch. I’m a sad bitch. I’m a creative bitch. Especially in the queer community, it’s a word of endearment. When someone calls you ‘bitch,’ it’s a rite of passage.”
The “bitch” in Brian’s bakery was partly inspired by a visit to Seattle’s Biscuit Bitch, which was launched in 2009 as a late-night pop-up in an existing coffee shop. At the counter, I am presented with a styrofoam clamshell packed with a Straight-Up Bitch!—an oversized biscuit submerged beneath a pool of sausage gravy and a scattering of pickled jalapeños—and I eat it at a wobbly café table on a downtown Seattle sidewalk. Founder Kimmie Spice says she thought about naming the business Biscuit Boy or Biscuit Man. The woman who owned the space, a self-proclaimed bitch whom Spice calls a mentor, encouraged Spice to go with Biscuit Bitch instead. “Own it, girl,” she’d said.
“I decided that the ‘bitch’ in Biscuit Bitch would be an empowering word that stood for a strong, confident, uncompromising woman who was unapologetic for being herself,” Spice explains. Though Spice, who is white and cisgender, arguably appropriated the term when she named her spot, she aims to be an ally to the groups who first reclaimed it. “Over the years, it’s changed from being about women to being about all of my staff, who are mostly non-binary. It’s still about inclusivity and the freedom to be who you are.”
She also strives to go beyond lip service in her bitch ethos. She was an early advocate of Seattle’s push for a higher minimum wage, she says, even when many other business leaders opposed it. Team members at Biscuit Bitch’s two locations now make $17.25 an hour to start plus an additional $8 to $13 an hour in pooled tips. They get a week and a half of paid time off and even part-time team members get 75 percent of their health insurance covered. (A dismal 32 percent of America’s food service workers have any health care coverage at all.)
“Most of my life I worked shitty minimum wage jobs; I raised children without health insurance,” Spice says. “I’m not gonna own a business that can’t pay fair wages.”
IN THE END, MY TOUR OF AMERICA’S BITCH-TAURANTS confirmed some obvious assumptions—namely, that mediocre French toast and bottomless mimosas alone will not set us free. Brunch will never be an anti-capitalist coup or even an act of epicurean dissent.
But that doesn’t mean these restaurants can’t provide some sanctuary in an increasingly chaotic sociopolitical landscape, with just enough gleeful, disruptive energy to whet one’s appetite for full-on revolt.
Let us hope for a world in which we all are ungovernable bitches—workers, managers, customers—fueled by melty breakfast sandwiches, collectively pushing back from the table and demanding something better for us all. A world in which more bitches have each other’s backs and the chanting doesn’t stop at shot-o’clock but instead leads to lasting solidarity.
How delicious would that be?
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