Tokyo Drag Brunch: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Daylight, tables of food, skipping children — what could go wrong in a drag queen’s set? 

That’s what I think as Osaka queen Madam Aika Markova and I pull up to the Lingua World Cafe one morning, a fine, chilly rain misting down like a sneeze from the universe. I’m in full bright-pink alien face paint and big yellow wig, and Markova is dolled up as a pared-down Elphaba Thropp from Wicked. “Today, we’re not feeling a full green beat,” she tells me earlier in her apartment. Today is my first time joining the cast of a real “drag brunch.” The day before, I’d caught a Shinkansen down to Osaka to join Markova’s La Faughné show. 

When we step into the café well ahead of call time (Markova being the organizer, and all), it’s already packed: small tables crowded together, full of chattering fans, friends, and family; kids squealing in joy; the other showgirls peeking out from the very rear of the venue. Soon I’m out in the narrow, drizzle-damp alleyway next to Lingua World Cafe, stowing my bags of drag gear next to the bicycles and brooms.

“This will be our changing room,” fellow queen SooFae SoFierce says with a laugh, crab-crawling under the staircase for shelter from the rain.

“Gotta be scrappy to do drag,” I say. “Fierce and fun, guys, fierce and fun.”

The Birth of the Drag Brunch

“Brunch,” a portmonteau of breakfast and lunch, arose in the UK and US in the late 1800s, paralleling the booming middle class of both countries. Brunch became a popular weekend social hour partly as a form of indulgence, partly as a form of conspicuous consumption: patrons could flex the newfound leisure time of having official weekends (which was only gradually adopted by businesses across the 18th and 19th centuries) and enjoy lavish drinks and meals. By the 1970s, thanks to Hollywood depictions further glamorizing brunch, it had become a staple of British and American culture, popularly serving delicacies such as Eggs Benedict, blinis, and cocktails including mimosas and Bloody Marys. In modern times, variations of the avocado toast have also become a classic.

On the restaurant industry’s side of things, brunch was a convenient cultural evolution that helped fill in the downtime between breakfast and lunch and boost alcohol sales, providing venues additional revenue streams.

The connection between drag queens and brunches stretches back, roughly, almost to the inception of brunch itself. Restaurant owner Madame Begue, who helped to spearhead “second breakfast” in New Orleans in 1884, featured a “’wall of fame’ full of signed photos of celebrity guests, including Julian Eltinge — a well-known female impersonator,’ according to Caitlyn Hitt of Thrillist. Hitt writes that vaudeville-style dinner theaters became increasingly popular throughout the early 1900s, with the drag components of the night often “drawing the biggest crowds.” When American prohibition began in 1920, these vaudeville dinner theaters experiences went underground and intertwined with speakeasy culture–a seedy and countercultural atmosphere, I imagine, not too different from today’s nightclub drag.

Drag dinners and drag brunches truly took off as a distinct institution in the mid 1950s, according to scholars of drag theater such as Joe E Jeffreys. Meal-side shows were a particularly winning combination as restaurants provided loopholes for drag queens to bypass anti-cross dressing and female impersonation laws (laws which, in the US, were only completely repealed by 1986). As Edward Siddons wrote in The Guardian article, “The extraordinary rise of drag brunch,” gay bars were subject to vandalism and police raids, while drag-and-dine venues allowed queens to perform risk-free. Both restaurants and nightclubs featuring drag performers operated with discretion to avoid police notice, but restaurants, by marketing their shows as “dinner theater” and catering to a largely straight audience, provided an additional smoke screen for their showgirls. 

As anti-cross-dressing laws were gradually abolished state-by-state in the US, now-renowned restaurants offering food and cabaret drag such as San Francisco’s Hamburger Mary’s and New York City’s Lucky Cheng’s and Lips began appearing after 1972. The popularity of drag and brunches, and of course drag brunches, has steadily climbed in the decades since, particularly since the mid-2000s as social media culture has taken off, and since 2010 with the cataclysmic arrival of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Drag Brunch Hits Japan

Drag brunch is incredibly new to Japan, in a large part because brunch culture itself is quite new. Aside from luxurious enterprises like Sarabeth’s (a popular breakfast and brunch chain originating from New York) breakfasts in Japan, and especially Tokyo, are characterized by their need for speed and efficiency in individuals’ busy school and work schedules. 

The shaping of drag brunch in Japan, then, has taken a top-down rather than bottom-up approach: instead of brunch culture gradually booking more and more drag, the drag queens have started organizing their own brunch. 

There are currently just two recurring brunch events in Japan. Philippine-born Markova began La Faughné in Osaka in 2023; the event moves from venue to venue, but most often Markova holds her shows at Art Beat Cafe Nakanoshima and Lingua World Cafe, located in Osaka’s heart. The venues do not offer traditional Western brunch meals but, as Markova says, “Customers get excited with Lingua World Cafe’s baguette sandwiches! And duh, a mimosa is a must.” La Faughné is a boisterous event–not least thanks to Markova’s humorous MC-ing and inspired shows. At the March show I joined, we drag queens danced with the children during and between sets and sat and chit-chatted with the customers (some of whom were local drag queens themselves). For the finale, Markova walked across a pathway of stools (simulating flight) during her “Defying Gravity” number.

Brunch is a Drag!, held in Shibuya’s TENCUPS Lounge, is the brainchild of Brazilian-born drag queen Labianna Joroe and American-born TENCUPS owner Brian Rentz. Started in 2024, Brunch is a Drag! has already seen over 18 shows and always boasts a polished cast of three queens, two performances each. Thanks to Joroe and Rentz’s partnership, Brunch is a Drag! benefits from the full kitchen of TENCUPS, featuring a more elaborate and Western-style brunch buffet of hot sandwiches, granola yogurt bowls, and poached egg toast, as well as decadent cocktails and coffee options — a menu I felt I might find in any upscale Californian joint. The venue is also set up with a long, runway-like corridor between the tables, which the queens (and occasional king) make full use of for dancing and acrobatics. 

“Good food, good drinks, and queer entertainment. What else can you ask for, right?” says Joroe. “You get to chitchat with the performers, watch our shows, take pictures. And we even do [LGBTQ] trivia, so you leave there educated about queer history.”

It’s not a regularly occurring event but another drag brunch worth mentioning is Nagoya’s first ever, the Metro Drag Brunch organized by Miku Divine at Mid Town BBQ this past summer. Though currently a one-off, Divine says that more brunches are in the works. 

“We wanted to take The Metro Club and offer an afternoon experience for customers who normally can’t stay out late,” Divine says, referring to the monthly drag show she organizes at Club Loverz. “Many of our customers have busy lives… So we wanted to take the magic of our drag show and present it in the daytime. Lip-sync and drag entertainment, along with chill beats from our Metro DJ, Neon.”

Unfortunately, drag brunches face distinct challenges in Japan, besides the lack of a longstanding brunch-culture. Open-air gay bar AiiRo Cafe, located in Shinjuku Ni-chome, held several drag brunches in the past, but stopped due to Tokyo’s strict rules about setting tables and chairs on sidewalks. 

“Because we don’t have inside space, there was always a chance police would come and shut it down at any time,” former AiiRo bartender Cody says. “Luckily it never happened.” 

In historic gay neighborhoods like Shinjuku Ni-chome, where bars are closely packed and space is at a premium, many venues that might otherwise be interested in holding a drag brunch and drawing a large crowd are stymied. Cody also points out that many of these small bars, including AiiRo, lack kitchens, and thus must outsource their food to nearby eateries. All told, and with limited seating available under the best of circumstances, continuing AiiRo’s drag brunches simply wasn’t economically feasible.

Keeping it Queer

Though still in its infancy, there is one area where Japan’s drag brunches are king: keeping the queer and community-oriented vibe among their audiences.

One of the main points of contention that arises in Western drag circles, such as those in the US and UK, is the importance of keeping drag LGBTQ-oriented, countercultural, and boundary-pushing, versus attracting the “pink dollar” (so to speak) of mainstream, straight audiences. Drag brunch is a particularly tense battleground, as historically these events were aimed at making drag accessible to straight audiences, as Joe E Jeffreys says: many critics in the West feel drag brunch is losing its connection to queerness. Moreover, while the brunch and dinner drag industry has been instrumental in providing more gigs, regular working hours, and a diversified source of income for drag performers (allowing some even to become full-time showgirls), it has also taken business away from wider LGBTQ neighborhoods and historic gay bars. 

By contrast, precisely because Japan’s drag scene, and especially its drag brunch scene is so small, events here still have a lot of heart and community. Stepping into either La Faughné or Brunch is a Drag!, visitors feel greeted by half the gayborhood: off-duty drag queens supporting their sisters, tight-knit friends enjoying the weekend, family members, and former classmates. Many at these events seem to have a personal connection with the queens and organizers, and those who don’t soon will. Perhaps most endearing of all is talking to the families with children: speaking to them, they all hope that their kids will grow up knowing it is okay to be gay or trans. 

“As an organizer, this feels extra special because I found a community that supports the art of drag,” says Markova. “Around the world people talk about how our art is evil and that we should be banned. But as human beings, we know how to filter our performances for our daytime audience and it has taught me how to be entertaining across all ages… The work we do is accepted and welcomed and seen.”

Joroe agrees with this sentiment, adding, “I get to talk to people I wouldn’t meet perhaps at the clubs. We allow kids and pets, so to see the parents bringing their kids is so heartwarming. Also, it’s a chance for people to talk to the performers (not like a club with loud music). It’s a blessing to have that connection with the audience.” At one of the Brunch is a Drag! shows I attended, Joroe spent much of the intermission teaching toddlers how to snap their fingers and yell “slay!” for the queens.

The strongest point of drag brunches (Markova, Joroe, and Divine all agree) is that it makes queer entertainment available to people who, for reasons of health, work, or lifestyle, cannot stay up late at night, or who are uncomfortable in noisy nightclubs. And certainly, as a drag connoisseur entering their twilight years (i.e. 32), I’ve become a fan of avoiding late nights and clubbing, and appreciate the chance to enjoy some drag over a plate of fancy breakfast food whether as a guest or as a performer. 

As Markova and I relax and count tips in the empty cafe post-brunch, she tells me, “One comment we often get from guests is this: ‘After attending drag brunch, I feel energized for the week.’ Which makes me the happiest.”

Featured image: Anita Dollar