Meet the gay chef who built a world-renowned restaurant in a tiny Virginia town

This story originally appeared on Out.Patrick O’Connell has spent nearly five decades turning a tiny Virginia town named Washington into the kind of place food lovers and travelers plan an entire trip around. In 1978, the self-taught chef opened The Inn at Little Washington in a former garage. Today, the Michelin-starred restaurant and Relais & Châteaux hotel is an internationally renowned destination, shaped as much by O’Connell’s highly personal vision of hospitality as by what arrives on the plate.Now, O’Connell is telling the story behind it all in his first memoir, Main, Middle & Gay. The wonderfully apt title comes from the three principal streets of Little Washington, named by George Washington in 1748, which today border the central block occupied by the Inn. “My story and the history of our town are now one,” O’Connell writes early in the book. From growing up gay in the 1950s and navigating an Irish Catholic upbringing in rural Maryland to teaching himself to cook, falling in love, and building an abandoned garage into one of the country’s most celebrated culinary destinations, it’s a funny, candid, and sometimes painful account of finding the place where he could finally be himself.Ahead of the book’s release, O’Connell spoke with Out about Catholic guilt, the first place he felt truly at ease as a gay man, cooking for everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Queen Elizabeth II, the hotels that still impress him, and what he’s still dreaming up for the Inn after 48 years. Main, Middle & Gay is out now and available online and wherever books are sold.When you travel now, what’s the first small detail that tells you a hotel or restaurant truly understands hospitality?Hospitality is simply about how a guest is made to feel. When I travel, I'm acutely aware of how a place makes me feel. Often, it's the first person you encounter whose warm smile sets the tone for what follows. People are what you usually remember most.You end your prologue