I felt lonely after moving to New York City during the pandemic and got over it by hosting dinner parties for strangers
New York #NewYork
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anita Michaud, the founder of Dinner With Friends, a dinner party-with-strangers project that’s been celebrating immense success. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
Growing up in the small city of Plymouth, Michigan, I had always dreamed of living in a huge metropolis like New York City, as cliché as it may sound.
Having visited several times as a child, I was instantly drawn to the energy of the place — it felt like the possibilities for what I could do and who I could become were endless.
Before moving to New York, I went to the University of Michigan, which was close to my hometown. So many of the people I grew up with went to college with me, and I had an amazing experience.
I thrived there, where I was heavily involved in both academics and extracurricular activities on campus. And as soon as I graduated from college, I was looking forward to starting a new chapter in New York, where I always imagined it would be really easy to meet new people and make friends.
I went through a bit of culture shock when I moved to Brooklyn in July 2021 and was faced with the reality of being all alone.
I quickly realized that without the social communities and campus living, meeting people was much more difficult.
Despite being in a city filled with over 8.4 million people, and living during a time when social media has us more connected than ever before, I was inevitably lonely.
I got inspired to do something about it a year later, during a vacation to visit my parents in Lisbon in April 2022. It was on that trip that I discovered that the Portuguese city was littered with speakeasy Chinese restaurants. I became fascinated by the idea of underground communal dining, hidden from everyone except those who are privy to the secret.
Growing up with parents who owned a restaurant, I was lucky to always be surrounded by food and seeing them being created by the community.
Like many people during the pandemic, I started taking my hobby of cooking more seriously with all the spare time I suddenly had on hand.
After some time spent toying with the intriguing idea of a secret dinner party, where strangers could convene to make friends, I finally decided to host one in May 2022 with my very own “strangers.”
These strangers were all people I knew, but didn’t know each other. There was just enough room for that genuine awkwardness which allows new friendships to bloom, and I also needed to see if the idea could work logistically.
And true enough, the dinner turned out to be a huge success — we were all having so much fun that none of us wanted it to end.
Using that as proof that hosting dinner parties with strangers was a good idea, I started Dinner With Friends, a small passion project where I would post dinner party invites on Instagram whenever I was free to host.
Each of the Dinner With Friends menus that I curate are very personal and thoughtfully put together, drawing inspiration from places I’ve traveled, as well as what’s in season, to make each dish as fresh and local as possible.
The delicious food I ate on one of my favorite trips I recently took to Florence and Cinque Terre in Northern Italy actually inspired several menus.
And I’m half Chinese, half English and French, so a lot of my cooking also draws on my heritage.
For my first dinner party, both the unofficial and official ones, I made Ligurian focaccia with flaky salt, ratatouille, homemade garlic-basil fettuccine in red sauce, and tiramisu.
I filmed the whole preparation process from start to end and shared it on Dinner With Friends’ official Instagram account.
The account started out with just 80 followers in May last year, and I would accept RSVPs through direct messages.
Now, with more than 2,000 followers, it would be virtually impossible for me to keep track of the endless list of applicants without my website-embedded form and ticket lottery system.
As it turns out, being lonely in a huge city like New York wasn’t a unique experience. There are many like me who yearn for a genuine human connection but struggle to form one in this vast, fast-paced world.
After hosting around 20 dinner parties, there’s so much I have learned about forming bonds with strangers and making them last.
Here are my top three tips for making friends that may come in handy for those seeking a new connection.
1. Take a leap of faith and be vulnerable
If there is only one thing all the attendees that came to my dinner parties have in common, it’s that they all took a leap of faith.
When someone signs up for a Dinner With Friends, they only get the address to my place 24 hours before the party. And they typically come alone, eager to have dinner with strangers and to have a good time.
It’s a completely new experience that honestly can be pretty daunting — new dining room, new people, and food that they may haven’t tried before.
To be the first one to put yourself out there to initiate a friendship is one of the hardest steps in forming new connections, but all my attendees took that leap of faith to come together as strangers and be vulnerable.
And that’s how they could leave as friends.
2. Remember that good things take time
My dinner parties aren’t a one-stop shop for friendship and will always come to an end. They are merely a bunch of starting points — precious opportunities to meet someone and for that short connection to possibly blossom into a beautiful relationship.
But all relationships take time and effort to build.
After every Dinner With Friends, I create a chat group for the attendees to continue talking to one another. Some groups have met every other weekend to hangout since their dinner party, while some never speak again.
It takes dedicated effort to keep up with follow-throughs after meeting someone, but the fruit of your labor may be an invaluable friendship you can cherish for a lifetime.
3. Power through the awkwardness
Though there are certainly times where you meet someone and instantly hit it off, most times it takes leaning into the awkwardness to discover what the friendship has to offer.
There’s that fear of being seen and known, and possibly being judged. But when two people choose to overcome that ordeal and power through the awkwardness to form a bond, there’s beauty in that, and you have the possibility of creating something really amazing.
Coming out of a pandemic where people felt acutely lonely, and still do, Dinner With Friends offered many of my guests the authentic human interaction they’d been seeking.
Though the project first began as a way for me to find friends in a new city after graduating from college, it became clear that loneliness and the desire to make new friendships are not confined to a single generation or demographic.
As the project continues to gain immense support, I’m bringing on new hosts around New York City of many backgrounds so that everyone has the opportunity to find genuine, fulfilling friendships through a Dinner With Friends event.
Many people have also reached out to me from other cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and LA, expressing interest in expanding the project, and it honestly feels quite surreal.
While I continue to build Dinner With Friends, I’m also working on building strong partnerships with the right people and brands that align with our motto — food is best paired and shared with great people and conversation.
Making new friends may always be a mortifying ordeal to many, but if having a casual meetup with strangers over dinner with a host to facilitate sounds less daunting to you, do find out more about Dinner With Friends on our Instagram page @DinnerWithFriendsNYC, and keep an eye out for upcoming events on our website.