Tips for Starting Your Own Dinner Club

Have you ever noticed that one of the best ways to reconnect and catch up with people you haven’t spoken with for a length of time is to sit down with them and share a meal together? Watch any show on television about families and you will see, in almost every episode, a scene where they are gathered around the dinner table, or in the kitchen at the very least. 

The dinner table has long been a place for family and friends to gather and share stories, catch up and reconnect. While this is usually easy for families, it may not be as easy for friends. But friends who are part of a Dinner Club together have a reason, once a week, to gather around the dinner table and reconnect over (hopefully) great food.

A Dinner Club has been compared to a Book Club in that people come together once a week (or however frequently the group chooses to meet) and have a discussion. The difference is that in a Book Club, participants discuss books. In a Dinner Club, the participants discuss anything and everything that is of interest to them, including books.

There is a lot of wiggle-room in starting your own Dinner Club, but the basic principle is that each week friends, neighbors and/or family members get together at a member’s home and eat dinner. It may be always at one member’s home and it may be the home of the “chef” of the week. They share the recipe with each of the members and then everyone goes home and prepares the dinner for their families. The following week, they reconnect and tell how the dinner turned out when they attempted it: Did they follow the recipe exactly but it didn’t taste quite the same? Did they alter the recipe to suit their own tastes? Did their families enjoy it and now want it on the regular “menu?”