You’re Invited

Hi Friend,

If this has found its way to you, it probably didn’t happen by accident.

Maybe someone who’s sat at my table told you about it. Maybe you heard a little about the dinners we’ve been hosting over the years and felt a small tug inside. Maybe something in you has been craving a pause, even if you didn’t have the words for it until just now.

Whatever the path, I’m glad you’re here. Because this isn’t just a dinner invitation. It’s an invitation to come home—to yourself, to others, to a kind of connection that’s become far too rare in the modern world.

We gather in my home, here in New York City.

We cook together. We share responsibilities. We talk, but not in the performative way most of us are used to. And sometime during the evening, once we’ve settled in, I’ll ask a single question.

I know that sounds vague.

But that’s when the room softens. That’s when the shift happens.

If I’ve learned anything from hosting over 740 of these experiences, it’s that a good question holds more power than we give it credit for. Something real happens when we come together without needing anything from each other except presence.

Now, I want to share just a little of how this all started—not to make it about me, but to give you a sense of where this all comes from.

Back in 2015, I was producing theater—living in the energy and speed of New York City. I’d just finished producing a Broadway play in Rome, and on the surface, it was everything I thought I wanted. It was a high point professionally. But when I flew home and landed back in my little 350-square-foot apartment in Manhattan, what I felt wasn’t accomplishment. It was disconnection. It was loneliness. It was this gnawing sense that success and fulfillment are not the same thing.

That contrast—between the communal dinners I’d experienced in Italy and the isolation I returned to in New York—woke something up in me. In Rome, people lingered. They passed plates. They told stories slowly. It wasn’t about the food, even though the food was good. It was about what the food made possible. And I missed that. I wanted that.

So I decided to try something.

I folded up my Murphy bed. I borrowed some chairs. I went to the street on the last day of the month—which in New York is the best place to find furniture if you know where to look—and I found a table. I cooked a red sauce, my own recipe, and I invited fifteen people into that little apartment..

We cooked. We served each other. We sat shoulder to shoulder. We passed wine and bread and questions and laughter. And halfway through the meal, at 7:47 pm, I asked everyone around the table a simple question:

“If you could give credit or thanks to one person in your life that you’ve never properly thanked, who would that be?”

The answers came slowly. Quietly. Thoughtfully. And then they came with more emotion, more clarity, more courage. That night, something changed in me—and in them.

We didn’t just eat that night. We connected.

And I knew I had to do it again.

So I did. Week after week. Same format. Same invitation. New faces. New stories. Over time, the dinners took on a life of their own. Friends invited friends. Strangers became family. And in every room, something sacred kept happening: people remembered what it felt like to be human with each other.

And through that rhythm—through the cooking and the asking and the sharing—I started to change too. I stopped looking at my world asking what was wrong. I started asking what was right. What was possible. I began to savor things I used to rush past. I started listening with a little more patience. And I started to feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time: joy. Real joy.

And that’s what I want to offer you now.

A seat at that table. A spot in a small circle of people gathered not to perform, but to be. Not to prove anything, but to feel something. Not to get ahead, but to come home.

Dinner begins at 6:30 PM SHARP.

Just bring a bottle of wine.

Come ready to connect. No polished version of yourself. Just you. As you are, wherever you are, whatever you’re carrying. Come hungry if you want. Come uncertain. Come joyful. Come exhausted. Just come real.

Because that’s who shows up here. And they are always enough.

This is your invitation.
Your seat is waiting.

With care,

Chris