Dinner Club — looking for a creative way to entertain at home
I have always been interested in either joining or creating a dinner club. My husband and I live in Chicago and we both enjoy cooking, entertaining and great conversation over delicious food. Often we would lament on the weekends that it would be such fun to invite two or three couples over to partake in a delicious dinner, tasty wine and a wonderful dessert with new friends who share our love for good food and good conversation. (No politics please - just like minded people who love food who are not afraid to try new restaurants or new ways to enjoy food!) I think it would be such fun to either host or be a part of a local dinner club but I am having difficulties in locating any dinner clubs in my area. Does anyone have any ideas about Dinner Clubs? Basically, I am looking for comments about any pitfalls or successes that anyone has been a part of one or created their own. I would truly like to have honest and forthright comments about setting one up.
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7 Comments:
try posting on Craiglist. I found a newly-formed book club this way. Ask anyone who's interested to email you, and then if they pass the non-creep email test, meet for coffee to see if you might want to hang out with them on a regular basis. It might take some trial-and-error, but I think it would work well if you dont already have friends interested in this type of thing.
Embackus at 3:12PM on 03/23/09
Just start one yourself. Host the first dinner in your home, inviting friends and accociates who you know appreciate good food. This will expand by degrees using the "friends of friends model and before you know it, your group will be quite large.
Or do what I did and charge a little money for the dinners and call your project an underground restaurant. Everybody loves being a little outlaw now and then!
sailordave at 3:29PM on 03/23/09
Yes Craigslist is an excellent idea. A lady in my area has a food party/singles meet every couple of months. From what I read it sounded very successful . It started out with the 40 something age group but has expanded to include people from age 20-70. Very cool.
chardonnay at 3:34PM on 03/23/09
I am in a dinner club that meets once a month and is hosted at a different member's home each time. The host creates the menu, with the recipes included, and sends it out at least a week before we meet. Everyone is assigned something different (appetizers, cocktails, salads, sides, desert, etc). It started with one person inviting one friend, and that friend inviting one friend that no one else knew, etc. We have 7 members which has worked out to be an ideal number in order to fill up courses (usually at least one person can't make it). It has been a great way to meet new friends in all kinds of different and interesting professions and to learn how to cook things outside of our comfort zone. We are all women, but this would be a fun ideas for couples as well! We live in the DC area and call our group UP- or Urban Picnic. Good luck starting your own!
jam114 at 3:55PM on 03/23/09
Craigslist is very hit and miss when trying to set up a dinning club -- our club in NYC has been trying for months to find someone on CL with little luck (we've gotten a ton of responses, but most of the people are either looking for a social outlet or looking to learn how to cook, but not a single person of the 20 we have interviewed from CL has been "serious" about food.)
It would be great if chowhound or SE allowed you to post to get people to join your cooking club, but if you point anything too obvious, then they take it down. Best way to find people is to start a discussion of the pros/cons of a dinner club and hope people are smart enough to contact you directly or figure out how to reach you.
They way we do things is rotate thru people's homes and divide into groups of two, each group handling either an appetizer, an entree or a dessert. Our dinners are based on themes -- you need some constraints or else it's hard to get focused.
If you live in Chicago, it would probably make sense when you are interviewing people to ask where they shop and where they eat -- not to say that someone has to have eaten at Trotters/Alinea/Moto/Blackbird/Hot Dougs to be in a cooking club, but you have to wonder about someone's seriousness about food if they haven't.
johnkeenan at 4:13PM on 03/23/09
we get together with a few friends every month and pick a favorite cookbook - and each person picks a recipe out of the cookbook, brings the ingredients and then we put a dinner together.....
it's fun, it's not perfect because they're not professional cooks but we do have a good time and it's all about sharing the afternoon with good friends, food and wine.
i highly recommend it....
pooch at 6:27PM on 03/23/09
Would be insterested in joining a dinner club. We are a professional couple in our 50's and live in the Western Suburbs. Interests include good food, wine and meeting new interesting people.
decodee at 11:08AM on 09/20/09