The Half-Assed Potluck & other simple ways to host
Don't let logistics get in the way of building community
About a year ago I was visiting a friend in Pittsburgh who talked about how much he missed his old social circle in NYC. I suggested he invite some of the people he wanted to get to know to dinner, and he said he didn’t know where to start. I said it’s Tuesday, so obviously we should make tacos.
He was resistant to the idea of throwing a ‘dinner party’ so last minute. But we put together a simple invite and he sent it to ten people. We stopped by the grocery store to pick up taco ingredients for about the cost of what he would have paid for a single meal at a restaurant.
In the end, eight people showed up and had such a good time that they made a WhatsApp group to share future plans. There are now a regular set of dinners, plans to go to events, and everyday banter in that WhatsApp group - in other words, an entire friend group spawned from one impromptu dinner.
Eating together is one of the best ways to build community. Priya Rose and her husband hosted regular Sunday potlucks to convince their friends to move near them, which seeded the Fractal network in NYC. Chris Murphy gathered people for regular meals to convince them to join his cohousing project in Mexico City.
It’s also really good for you. Studies have shown that eating meals with others lowers stress, lengthens life expectancy, decreases obesity, and helps teenagers make fewer stupid choices.
Yet many adults these days have never built a habit of sharing meals. For some it’s too expensive to go out, or they’re not confident in their cooking abilities. For others it’s too much of a hassle to plan something. And for many the biggest hurdle might simply be in their own heads: they imagine they need to do something ‘extra’ to invite people over. I recently listened to a podcast where Ezra Klein was interviewing Priya Parker of The Art of Gathering fame. Klein agonizes over how he wants to start doing regular shabbat meals with friends, but can’t seem to get over the hump to actually organize something.
To Klein I would say the same thing I said to my friend in Pittsburgh: just invite them already. Gathering people for a meal doesn’t have to be fancy or take a ton of work.
To make it easy for you, here are a few ideas for shared meals that we’ve seen work well.
Potlucks: cheap, easy, and delightful
The easiest version I’ve heard of this is the ‘Half-Assed Potluck’, which Priya Parker describes in the podcast I linked above:
The rules are simple: Bring whatever is in your fridge or pick up something on the way. Wear sweats. Don’t clean. Use paper plates. Eat what appears, pile onto the couch, talk, laugh. Everyone is home by 8:30.
Potlucks outsource some of the hassle of organizing a meal by asking the attendees to bring some (or all) of the food. As the host, you’re providing the venue and giving people a reason to come together. That’s a reasonable trade.
The only real ‘risk’ of potlucks is that you don’t end up with a balanced meal if, for example, everyone decides to bring dessert. To mitigate that, you can choose to have people sign up in advance to say what they’ll bring - a shared google spreadsheet works well for this - and/or give some gentle guidelines on what kind of food you’d be most excited about:
You can also combine a potluck with another fun event like a clothing swap:
Or a talk about something interesting:
One variation on a potluck I love involves a one time investment in a pizza oven, and buying pizza dough (most bakeries and grocery stores will sell this). You invite your friends to bring pizza toppings - traditional or weird.
It’s fun for your guests to have a thing to do, and you can make exactly as much pizza as people want to eat. My friend swears by this oven which turns out perfect pizza pies in 60 seconds.
The cleanup is minimal and you usually end up with a lot of great ingredients for your home cooked meals going forward.
Deliverance is one step even lower maintenance than a potluck. Instead of asking people to bring a dish, have them simply order delivery to your house at a set time. You end up with a mix of your friend’s favorite cuisines, and you can send them home with any leftovers so there’s zero cleanup.
For any of the above, you don’t even technically need to provide a space to host: you can meet at a public park for a picnic.
If you want to provide the food:
‘Assemble your own’ tacos, salad, or poke: This is a great option if you don’t want to think too much about cooking. Another bonus is that it’s adaptable to people’s dietary restrictions: if they’re gluten free or vegan or allergic to nightshades (what are nightshades?) or whatever they can just pick the ingredients that work for them. Phil was the one who taught me about poke - all you have to do is cut up some fish or tofu and then let people assemble the rest, but because it’s *poke* people think it’s fancy and give you a lot of credit for putting together a great meal.
Share your culture: Here was an invite I got from a friend who loves cooking traditional hot pot:
Don’t make it too hard on yourself
It’s true that hosting takes some energy - you are providing a space that you maintain (unless you’re picnic-ing), and will have to deal with some amount of cleanup. Therefore it’s not unreasonable to ask your guests to contribute in some way. In some of the examples above, the hosts have small concrete asks: help with dishes, contribute $ if you can’t bring food, RSVP only if you intend on coming.
Some people might balk at asking their guests to do anything because they feel that it wouldn’t be good hospitality. To them I’d say: if you make hosting expensive and time consuming for the hosts, they’ll do it less. Most guests are probably more grateful to you for giving them a reason to convene than they are irritated by the request to put their dishes in the dishwasher.
And we need more hosts. People are so hungry for connection they’ll talk to AI chatbots just to feel heard. You have a table. Use it.
To conclude, I’ll outsource to Priya Parker once again:
Just start. Just start. We’re all sort of sitting there being like: I wish I were invited. Host! One of the most powerful ways to begin to feel like you belong to a place, especially if you’ve moved to a new place, is to host.
Suggested further reading:
can confirm the BYO topping pizza party makes for a great party and gives people a fun activity. I think making your own dough results in a tastier outcome though :)
My favorite thing about this type of potluck is that it just makes being around other people something easy and normal. No need to clean every corner of the house, or have a theme or whatever expectation people have that creates a barrier to involving others in your regular lives! That’s why I started my Substack, partially inspired by y’all, and Priya’s work too!! Thanks so much for writing.