Ask most people and they’ll tell you HAGS is a tasting-menu restaurant. From Wednesday through Saturday, the plush, soft-toned jewelbox in Manhattan’s East Village serves both its omnivore and a vegan tasting menus, often with some overlap (both currently include a dessert made with rhubarb, “our favorite leggy redhead!” exclamation point included). Add in the optional wine pairing, and the meal will run you over $200 a person. Not the most expensive meal in New York by far, but one for which most people would have to specifically budget for.
But if you ask the restaurant’s co-owner and chef, Telly Justice, a two-time James Beard Award semifinalist, HAGS is a pay-what-you-can restaurant. Since opening in 2022, the restaurant has operated a pay-what-you-can brunch on Sundays, where an a la carte menu might include anything from a cacio e pepe frittata stuffed with spaghetti, or cornbread French toast with miso and smoked maple syrup. Sunday afternoon’s offering is the entire point of HAGS. “Our business model was reverse engineered to pay for the pay-what-you-can service,” Justice says.