At my recent dinner, I was faced with the worst fate that could have fallen on the diner. There was a troublesome man in the restaurant. He spoke too loudly about boring, sharing unsolicited “expertise” about subjects he had little knowledge of, and wearing an ugly jacket. He never said anything offensive or inappropriate, but hmm, he I smoked.
If I could whisper and gossip with the group that was eating about the naughty guy across the room that night, that would be one thing. But no, the worst part is that I was sitting next to him. The restaurant had a communal table aimed at fostering connections and an entire table desire to get out of the shell. But I was on shoulders with the guy whose laughter was cooling my spine.
In food media, you are always a stone that is separate from how someone talks Food brings people together. It emits abundance, but in the end it’s one of many meaningless phrases. Food brings people together because food has to be in a place to eat it. From inevitable community building to finding a common foundation for conflicting politics, no further revelation is guaranteed.
In fact, the unity of food can often backfire. You have to think about the discussion around the Thanksgiving table I turn myself into steel every yearor under any circumstances, endless discussion The baby should be in the restaurant. It’s a minefield there. Cash constantly dwindling With meals that they cannot even guarantee they will like their meal companions, the joint table presents additional calculations. Are the expected benefits of co-dining worth the risk of connecting with new people in ways you never imagined, or is there a chagrin ordeal of eating three hours next to someone you can’t stand?
This has not stopped the new crops from fine dining to try to bring people together more by serving the most “together” food possible. Over the past few years, the round party atmosphere for everyone has expanded from the cafeteria-style restaurant and Le Pain Quotidien. Perhaps it started from the community table at Blue Hill in Stoneburns. Dinner Party Brooklyn and The Beast of Portland He was an early adopter Mosquito Dinner Club In New Orleans. but, “The Lonely Trend” It continues to influence people, and more restaurants are using it to create new social opportunities. Matty in Miami Portland’s Can. Kwameon utilities Dogon DC has added a joint standing dining room.
Emily Pilkington, general manager of Mosquito Supper Club, says that for Melissa Martin’s Bayou Cooking Chef, this is the way food can experience it. “I think she started it as a dinner club as a way to present food in a similar way that she would have been at one table with the whole family,” says Pilkington.
But aside from the romance of the way cooking is “intended” to experience, the communal tables have practicality. Some restaurants, like Mosquito Dinner Club, offer all family styles. Others will offer individually plated ones, but from the set menu. In any case, this format allows the kitchen to fire all limited menus at once, and sometimes you don’t even have to worry about plating.
This is especially beneficial for pop-ups. Timothy Deer Ring peopleBYOB joint dinner party in Philadelphia has one seat. Offering a set menu is efficient, especially for permanent homeless concepts (currently operating in a private location in Fishtown). This style of meals “is not my ultimate goal when actually opening a brick and mortar store,” says Dearing, but he enjoys watching “someone who doesn’t know who is sitting down and talking to each other and talking about food.”
But does it actually cause that conversation? Dearing acknowledges that this form is self-selective. “I think most people understand that it may be a bit offensive at first, but because they eat delicious food, they are discussing the basics of cooking, inspiration, ingredients, farms, etc. But there are always people who don’t realize it’s collaborative until they get there, or at some point in the meal, they realize that this isn’t theirs. It’s up to the restaurant to make sure everything runs smoothly when it happens.
Pilkington says he has never experienced the “worst thing” that could happen in a co-dining dining (“You’re sitting next to someone you want to talk about politics the whole time, and you’re the opposite,” but “we’re more of a joke about human behavior than a server.” Staff are trained with tricks to join a shy table. People start sharing something, or re-routing the conversation, just like bringing out the bread early. They also sit in science and wrap large parties around a small party in the middle, so you don’t snugglely wrap around a solo diner or a couple sitting on the edge of a table.
Sitting next to an annoying man is not the worst thing that could have happened that night. I think I was training myself. Part of my anxiety at that dinner was there with my wife, who is trans. While writing this piece, I talked to colleagues and friends about a collaborative dining experience. Multiple blacks and POCs mentioned the experience of sitting next to a white guardian, where they were clearly not excited to share the space with them. The slightest are not necessarily public, like loud discussions about politics and those going out. Sometimes, just looking from across the table reveals what you don’t want.
Perhaps that anxiety left him unable to fully engage with the table, which was mostly white heterosexual couples. These days, my guards have risen more than usual. Maybe I was someone who needed to allow me to be surprised by new connections. By the time we got to our main course, we all shared wine and gave each other their Instagram handles, and we had come up with places we had promised to be BFF forever, like the last day of summer camp.
The best in a communal dining can be much higher than when you’re at a private table. Unpredictability can also lead to a deep lowest. When I left after that recent meal, I realized that while the food was sublime, the night’s tale was about an annoying man. But that made me want to go back and gamble another night to see if the company matches the food. That risk is involved, but what a reward.
