Eating Dinner with Four Strangers
“I’m reading this book right now that says the measure of happiness isn’t money, but control,” says Eric to our table. I’m sitting with four other people at a restaurant in Wicker Park and I know no one’s last names. I actually didn’t know any of these individuals until an hour ago.
A few days prior to this dinner, I was on the phone with my great aunt. She’s 92 and has only within the past couple of years gotten the internet in her home. Before that, she received her news from the radio, the television, and the newspaper. She has a loving family, but I’d say she has held on to a more simple life. She calls me every Sunday and said on this particular phone call, “Young people do not host dinners like they used to. Rather, I think they prefer to go out.”
I’m out to dinner with four people I would have never met otherwise, certainly not at a dinner party since we have no mutual friends. We all signed up for a Timeleft event, an app that began in Paris as a way to “combat big city loneliness.”
I’m a born and raised Chicagoan so I don’t often feel lonely here, but my compulsion to sign up for Timeleft came about a year after a significant breakup. Although I had dated a few people since I ended things with my ex, I didn’t feel like waiting around for the right “swipe right” or the next stranger to collide with at a bar. I’d started a list of in-person mingle events, both platonic and romantic in nature, and Timeleft was my foray into what I call “stranger dinners.” I became curious about it after my Instagram algorithm bombarded me with ads for this app and I decided getting thrusted with strangers could be good for my soul—to be in a safe, but completely disruptive-from-the-norm social situation.
As my first Timeleft evening went on, I found there was something rather exceptional about this dinner with the four strangers. Timeleft dinners aren’t marketed as a singles event or an event to make new friends. It truly pairs six people together for an evening out, which is what makes this app successful. There are enough individuals to keep the chatter going, individuals who feel comfortable enough (even if they, like me, run anxious) to link up during the middle of the week with little to no social pressures.
Timeleft dinners occur every Wednesday all across the world. So while my little dinner of five was going on, so were several others in Chicago. Hours prior, later, or around the same time, there were multiple Timeleft dinners in San Francisco, Paris, Quito, and Marrakesh. At the end of my dinner, all the dinners in the same Chicago neighborhood area have the opportunity to link up at a bar with the other stranger dinners happening at the same time.
I’m sitting at this table with Eric, who does data analytics, Ritu the journalist, Jack, who literally cuts corneas for a living and works on transplanting them in a lab, and Porter, whose profession I don’t remember, but I do remember that he was born and raised in Andersonville. One person didn’t show up. None of us have done a Timeleft dinner before.
All of us seem well-read and enjoy going out to eat; we all very much pride ourselves on our familiarity with Chicago restaurants, though none of us had been to or even heard of Indian Paradise, where we are having this dinner meetup. When I’m around others who like to eat, I realize this is surely not a unique thing, not even really a personality trait. My ex once said going to restaurants is what adults do when they run out of hobbies, but I disagreed with this. I believed exploring restaurants scenes felt like local travel. I think of my great aunt’s comment and how I so enjoy a restaurant and honing in on my knowledge of the Chicago restaurant scene specifically. I would love to host dinners if I had a bigger place, but young folks cannot afford to buy homes the way they could back in her day. It’s just different.
I’m also thinking about Eric’s comment on happiness. I’m a person who likes control, so I agree with what he’s saying. When something occurs that feels disorderly, I get into a slump. Most people probably do. I realize at this dinner going out to eat makes me happy because it is in my control and I feel happy meeting these four strangers, even though the anxiety of linking up with four people made for an uncomfortable hour leading up to the dinner. It was something I chose to do with my evening; it’s how I like to spend my time.
In any unknown social situation, I find the arrival and departures sickening. Do I want to be the first person to arrive somewhere and have people look for me or do I have to look around the restaurant for these four strangers? In leaving, would we all feel this need to keep in touch, or could I just flee? I didn’t want anything to feel forced or inorganic. Naturally, it’s during the dinner part, the event itself, when I feel the most calm; the situation is steady. This goes for Timeleft, showing up for a date, arriving at conference, starting a new job, etc. I’m thinking of Eric’s comment with this too. Not knowing my Timeleft dinner companions is completely out of my control, even though I could have canceled my spot and yet, when I arrive, I feel comfortable, happy even. I’m not sure if I’m fully adopting the “happiness is control” motto, but it felt like a topical remark. My first Timeleft dinner occurred right after an election cycle when often one can feel out of control. Sure, you get to vote, but you alone do not get to determine a world leader. I signed up for Timeleft to shake myself out of what felt like an oversaturated political time and after a year of getting into my own routine without my ex.
The four of my Timelefters and I had a two-hour meal at the Indian restaurant and then left. No numbers were exchanged and I kind of loved that. Jack said it was nice to “touch grass” again. I felt like meeting up with these strangers was the shake up I needed for what had also felt like a monotonous few weeks.
I will likely never see any of these people again, but I do not mourn the lack of a friendship or romantic connections. Even within that dinner, we made inside jokes with one another, created an ecosystem of gestures and conversations. Jack said towards the end, “Yeah, I’d definitely do this again. I wonder if it will be as good as this. Or will I always be reminiscing on our Table 3 reservation. Like, I’ll be with a new group and say to them, ‘Well, that’s not how Table 3 does it.’” I learned from this dinner, especially being a single woman with a majority of my friends in relationships, that getting dinner with strangers makes the world feel more open, makes it seem like there are people just like myself looking for connections, whether fleeting or long-lasting.
I’ve been hearing people saying lately that dating apps are becoming passé. The generation below me who grew up entirely in the digital age is seeking non-digital times. Like Jack, maybe they crave touching grass. Before I was with my ex, I was on the dating apps; now I’m on them again and I can see how much they’ve changed. Hinge, for example, used to connect to a user’s Facebook account and showcase friends of friends in the Hinge feed. Now, I realize dating apps benefit from keeping its users single. Free versions of these apps are virtually unusable. The apps give the illusion of wanting to help single people—and certainly have paired thousands of couples together—however, it’s very obvious Bumble and Hinge and Tinder just want my dollar. Timeleft does cost money to reserve a spot, but it feels less desperate than the promises of premium versions the apps flash at me. Then again, with both Timeleft and a dating app date, connections are made in quite random, happenstance ways, which are desperately needed post-pandemic and within an era soaked with screentime. It’s clear they both were all designed to forge relationships.
When you sign up for Timeleft, it asks you a variety of questions about yourself. Allegedly there is an algorithm that sets you up with likeminded but different individuals. Our table, for example, was filled with people from very different industries. One of the questions the platform asks is if you prefer rap or rock, a question our group scoffed at. You may as well ask someone if they prefer peace to love. Somehow through the availability of our schedules and this questionnaire, I got to enjoy my paneer masala with Ritu, Porter, Jack, and Eric.
I find it almost funny how in our internet-inundated world we are craving these in-person interactions, in-person situations that are crafted through technology. I also think of my great aunt’s time, how there would have never been such an arbitrary assortment of people at a dinner party. Rather, her dinner parties were probably filled with people from her synagogue, her neighbors. Her dinners, while more organically crafted, were less accidental, had less of a reach. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but since I can be friends with someone in Australia, for example, much more easily than being a pen pal with one fifty years ago, my Timeleft dinner parties might as well be shared with people I wouldn’t likely have met on a day-to-day basis.
I found it remarkable that my phone told me where to go, I had dinner with four strangers, and then left. That was it. I liked having the chance for connection without the need to continue it, even though the app asks you if you’d like to connect with anyone on the Timeleft app post-dinner. Perhaps I’ll run into my Timelefters in the city one day, and perhaps not. I appreciated that there wasn’t a forced exchange of information or numbers. That dinner just existed as it was, untouched by ice breakers or team building tactics. It made me feel like I’m not the only one looking for love, friendship, or just a conversation with people outside of my familial or social spheres. Now, I think of Table 3 fondly and keep Timeleft in my back pocket for when I’m feeling like I want to host my own dinner party.
Sophie Amado graduated with her MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago, where she taught undergraduate writing and rhetoric, and her BA in English and Spanish from the University of Iowa. In 2014, she received a Fulbright grant to teach in Madrid, Spain. Sophie is the Creative Nonfiction Director for Arcturus, a magazine of new perspectives. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Sheepshead Review, Ponder Review, and more.