Haven for Beautiful Food and Queer Community, Lil' Deb's Oasis Is For Sale

For a decade, Lil’ Deb’s Oasis has offered some of the most colorful, and delicious food in the Hudson Valley. With its experimentally tropical menu as nucleus, chef-owner and creative director Halo Kaya Perez-Gallardo and their team built an LGBTQ+ community around creativity, belonging, and communal nourishment.

Now, in a surprise announcement on December 1, Perez-Gallardo says they’re stepping away at the end of the month, and that Lil’ Deb’s is for sale, with the hope of finding a buyer who will honor the space’s cultural power.

Perez-Gallardo’s Instagram post begins simply: “a big update… to my dearest Lil’ Deb’s community near and far,” and ends with a heartfelt plea for the next steward of the restaurant to “come find us!” 

Daily operations under Perez-Gallardo’s leadership will cease after December 31, but the Oasis will stay open with the current staff continuing to run the restaurant in the interim. “The restaurant will continue to be lovingly operated by the incredible, buoyant, and capable team currently in place,” they say. “I know and trust their hearts, minds, and palates.”

Perez-Gallardo also expresses deep gratitude to dozens of past and present staff members and to the wider community of supporters, diners, cookbook buyers, gala-goers, and everyone who helped make bright space what it became.

“This gratitude applies just as much to YOU, our beautiful supporters,” Perez-Gallardo writes. They note that Lil’ Deb’s has survived heartbreak, the pandemic, and even death, but more than that, it has held people safe, offered connection, and fostered “inner growth that helps you realize when the shoe doesn’t fit anymore.”

Now, they say, is their moment to let go. “I am stepping away from my daily role as owner of this beautiful restaurant.” The announcement signals both an end of an era and a possibility for a new beginning.

Founded in 2015 by Perez-Gallardo and Hannah Black, Lil’ Deb’s Oasis began as a pop-up dinner series in the former diner called “Debbie’s Lil’ Restaurant.” The name pays tribute to the previous owner, whose steady late-night diner had served the Hudson community for a generation.

The pair, both trained as artists, envisioned something different: not merely a restaurant, but an evolving art installation, a community hub, and an identity-inclusive sanctuary. Its hallmark aesthetic neon-tinged tropical motifs, collage-covered placemats, pastel bar stools, and all manner of loud visuals, created a space as playful and living as the dishes themselves. 

Culinarily, Lil’ Deb's has described its offerings as “tropical comfort food”: a lush blend of Latin, South Asian and coastal influences, anchored by Perez-Gallardo’s Ecuadorian roots. Think charred octopus with avocado cream, whole fried fish, plantains, coconut-rum trifles, and sauces heavy on lime, coconut, and fresh herbs. 

Through the years the restaurant gained a reputation for bold flavors, welcoming energy, and radical inclusivity. It became a beloved gathering place for queer residents, artists, and curious diners from far and wide. Critics praised it: a review in a Bon Appetit magazine described it as “an art installation with knockout food.”

That acclaim culminated in multiple nods from the James Beard Foundation, which recognized Perez-Gallardo among semifinalists for Best Chef: Northeast and Outstanding Hospitality. 

In 2022, they codified the restaurant’s spirit into a cookbook, Please Wait to Be Tasted: The Lil' Deb's Oasis Cookbook, filled with over 70 signature recipes alongside essays on food, identity, and community. The book was featured on Vogue’s list of “41 Cookbooks Everyone Should Own.”

Lil’ Deb’s has also long stood for community activism: during the Covid-19 pandemic, the team launched a “Community Tab” credit system to support diners with fewer means; they operate a community fridge and donate portions of proceeds to social-justice causes. 

Now, with Perez-Gallardo stepping back, Lil’ Deb’s enters a new chapter. Their public call for a visionary, community-focused buyer suggests hope that the restaurant’s next owner will carry forward its legacy, but Perez-Gallardo will leave some big, unusually colorful shoes to fill.