The In-betweeners: Dining out or house party? It can be both

Courtesy Dinner Article

From sound alone, it may as well be your typical dinner party: clinking utensils, whispers of gossip, and someone asking where to find parking—except, here, no one is hosting, and most of the guests have never met before.

Humans still crave connection, even with strangers and acquaintances. Dinner parties are a great way to satisfy that craving, especially the ones that engage guests to the point of no distraction. The food becomes a conversational lubricant: an edible filler for awkward silences and a topic of discussion in itself. Meanwhile, common dining interactions like passing plates and pouring drinks are extensions of that conversation as opposed to interruptions.

However, dinner parties like this require two things: friends or family, and a sizable living space—things taken for granted in generations past, but are not a given today. 

Courtesy Dinner Article

This is where the in-betweeners come in, a term I’ll use to describe new attempts to marry the intimacy of house parties with the ease and accessibility of dining out.

To build my friend group during adulthood, I’ve tried a variety of methods—adult soccer leagues, social mixers, and run clubs, to name a few—with some being more successful than others. While I managed to build some strong relationships through soccer, I desired connections that persisted outside of the sport. As such, I explored a couple of in-betweeners focused on connecting people over the dining table. 

Those would be Timeleft and Dinner Article.

I stumbled upon Timeleft in August 2024 while doomscrolling on Instagram. 

It’s an app that matches people in groups of four to six, based on personality tests that users take after signing up. The app also handles the logistics of booking a restaurant reservation and provides icebreaker questions to guide conversations if needed. 

This led me to dinner at Brown & Loe, where I ate, laughed, and shared stories with five complete strangers. Their matching algorithm seemed to place a heavy emphasis on our personal traits and interests. That night, it felt like we were connected by our sense of adventure and outgoing personalities, and valuing experiences over material things. Even though we all came from different backgrounds, we found commonalities in our values and humor. I left with new contacts and a sense of satisfaction from stepping outside of my comfort zone.

Courtesy Dinner Article

My next experience was with Dinner Article. Founded by Gisèle Ndifor and Crystal Adwoa, this Kansas City-based supper club operates a bit differently. 

Their ticketed events are open to everyone, and there’s no pre-screening or personality quiz ahead of time. Instead, Dinner Article attracts like-minded people through curated themes intended to elevate these dinners beyond surface-level discussion.

My night’s theme was entitled “The Love We Don’t Talk About.” What followed was a two-hour prix fixe dinner where we chatted about our dating highs, lows, and outlooks on the overall scene while the hosts acted as both conversation guides and servers. Unlike Timeleft, which groups users based on age, Dinner Article’s open-invite attracts a variety of ages, which added another dynamic to the discussions. 

I didn’t leave these dinner parties with a new lifelong best friend. I did leave with new acquaintances (some of whom I am still in contact with), and gratitude for the moments I was able to share with people I’d never met. It led me to reflect on what building community really means. 

Dinner Article founders Gisèle Ndifor and Crystal Adwoa // Courtesy Dinner Article

Yes, those unbreakable bonds in which we pour the majority of our time and energy are fundamental. But from the in-betweeners, I found that another bedrock of a tight community is those acquaintance-level relationships, or “weak ties” as coined by sociologist Mark Granovetter, which are essential to expanding social accessibility. 

Having acquaintances outside of your bubble attracts opportunities and ideas that lie outside of your purview. It’s the direct path between you and the unknown: The people that you may not text every day, but get a smile and a hug out of you when you see them in passing. The people that you may not have seen for a few months, but still show up to your potluck with homemade lasagna in hand.

And if you don’t have the space to host these potlucks personally, the commercial in-betweeners provide an alternative way to reap the benefits, with the logistics handled, and a low-pressure environment where you know everyone else is there to meet new people too. 

I’ve come a long way since the day I walked into Brown & Loe, and I’m blessed to have dependable and amazing friends from various walks of life. However, a village requires villagers who show up, and I look forward to expanding my village at my next in-betweener.