Comment by agotterer
2 years ago
A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business.
So far we’ve hosted 12 dinners over the past year. Growing from out first meal with 13 friends to as many as 80 guests for this months meal. Our mailing list has over 400 people on it and we’ve sold out every event since our 4th. Sometimes we end up hosting multiple nights.
It’s not a very scalable business as it exists today. For now is just a passion project that makes a few bucks, allows us meet interesting people, and provides the opportunity to discover new foods and restaurants.
This is actually a really cool idea because for those of us who only dine out once or twice a month, it's nice to make it a unique or fun experience rather than a humdrum outing to eat average or templated food.
I would definitely be interested in something like this coming to our area.
Very cool! Any advice for someone who would want to replicate this endeavor?
I'm happy to share my experience and lessons, but its a bit too much to type. If you are serious about starting one feel free to shot me an email (address in my profile).
What I will say is that I think the timing was right. My co-host and I lived in Manhattan pre-pandemic and regularly took advantage of the restaurant variety there. Our dinners are hosted on Long Island and our theory is that people who move from Manhattan to Long Island over the last 20 years started to expect higher quality food and a larger variety of ethnic options. Over the past decade or so the variety and quality of Long Island restaurants has greatly improved from what was here 25 years ago when I was growing up.
Post pandemic we saw an appetite (pun intended) for people to just get out of the house, be around other people, and have an experience. Quite a few people who come to the dinners say that they keep coming back because their partner/family aren't adventurous eaters so they never get to try new foods or typically wouldn't order some of the things we put on the menu. We aren't going for a fear factor vibe, but we do try to get people out of their comfort zone. We have a large number of solo guests who enjoy meeting new people and sharing a like-minded experience. Initially the group skewed heavily towards males in their 30's, which was our friends. Today its a very diverse group of people.
Very cool story! How did you grow the group? Was it all through word of mouth from your initial seed group of friends?
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Not the poster but I used to host potlucks on a semi-regular basis. No money involved but I imagine the skills are basically the same; inviting people, managing the incoming food, etc. I would probably start by hosting a potluck for 5-10 people and then scale up from there.
> For now is just a passion project that makes a few bucks, allows us meet interesting people, and provides the opportunity to discover new foods and restaurants.
What an unique side project, I'm very impressed.
Where do you host it? At the restaurant itself or at your own venue?
At the restaurant for the monthly meals. We are also experimenting with a "chefs table" with a smaller more intimate group hosted in pop up locations.
How do you monetize it?
The cost per plate is negotiated with the restaurant ahead of time. We collect all of the money at time of RSVP which includes our margin. We then pay the restaurant and keep our fee.
How do you deal with drinks?
As a customer I'd probably want to run a tab at the restaurant for whatever I drink (assuming they're alcohol-friendly) but as an organizer I'd probably want an upfront corkage fee I could take a reliable cut of.
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That depends on what your definition of authentic is. If it means ingredients sourced from their host countries, then that's going to make it extremely hard for any restaurant to start; considering the logistical cost and generally things not being fresh enough. The appropriate definition should be authentic methods. If I want to cook dum biryani and market it as dum biryani, I should be cooking it in the traditional method of using a bread sealed handi; but calling it unauthentic if my chicken wasn't born in Hyderabad makes no sense.
That attitude isn’t invited to the dinner party.
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One of the best things about meeting people in person is that no one is rude enough to make this kind of comment to your face. Unfortunately the internet removes that barrier.
Your comment is confusing rudeness with your ignorance of how foreigners feel about food in their host countries vs at home. His comment is not any different than what my Indian and Chinese friends say.
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Edit: dishes authentic to a region cooked as close to authentic as the chef and ingredients allow.
If you live in a metropolitan area, finding them in local niche shops tends to not be overly difficult. Not to mention that it's possible to import as well.
It's strange how you are being downvoted when my foreign friends say the exact same thing. They say that the food at the restaurants we go to have a different smell from the food back home.
Maybe when your friends travel, they change too.
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Your friends say "the Chinese food in America doesn't taste the same as the food back at home"?
Or your friend interrupts a restaurant owner - a restaurant they've never eaten at - and says "you call that 'authentic' food? I doubt it."
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