How To Start A Cooking Club

“Our coterie has morphed into that since its beginning in 2002 as a group of single gals who were sometimes more focused on drinking than cooking. Now we’re a mix of single and married professional women and moms with a shared passion for food and friendship.

Here’s how we work it: The theme changes each time, varying with the season and whim of whoever is hosting that month, but the format is almost always the same. The menu is planned over email; each member’s dishes are partially prepped at home; the final touches are done together; and we exchange recipes and tips while sharing our elaborate meal, dinner-party–style. And whether it’s Cinco de Mayo, a field trip to see Julie & Julia followed by an offscreen simulation or our annual New Year’s Resolution Diet meeting, our cooking club is as much about entertaining one another as it is learning about the menu at hand.

Our most recent meeting, which convened at my house, was a Go-To Dinner Party theme—or an exchange of each member’s signature recipes of favorite dishes and tips “to impress without stress.” Unlike cooking from the Mario Batali cookbook, say, or creating an Indian-food feast (both of which we’ve done), this menu was bound to be less cohesive, despite our emailed group effort to round it out with the right proportions of vegetables, starches and mains.”

excerpted from “Collective Good Taste“ by Sally Horchow for the LA Times Magazine. Dinner clubs are rapidly gaining popularity. Kinfolk Magazine recently profiled the Brooklyn Supper Club, and Sunday Suppers by Karen Mordechai sells out as fast as she lists events.