Cooking Clubs Are Helping Us Make Friends As Adults

Refinery29

6 days ago

In a park in London last month, over 200 people gathered each with a homebaked cake in hand, ready to share their creation and feast on as many others as they possibly could. Cakes of all designs and flavours — matcha and black sesame, mango and raspberry, chocolate and coconut, caramel crunch, Indian rasmalai — lined long tables. All everyone had to do was add their cake, try as many as they could, then sit and socialise in the grass while tucking in. This is just one way people are using food as a means to make new social connections in a time where we're constantly on our phones, and people are trying to combat loneliness.
What started out with Elisa Sunga, 35, from San Francisco, creating Cake Picnic for 15 friends in April last year, turned into an event that tours and draws in hundreds of strangers. 'I've loved seeing people come together around cake from all over the world,' Sunga tells Refinery29. 'It's such a fun and unique event where the focus of the event is cake, friendships, and new memories. We are all connected by our love for cakes and are intentionally choosing joy and whimsy. I think we need a lot more of that in our everyday life.' Sunga's cake tour has five more stops this year, with New York and LA next, and in 2026 will visit 15 cities globally.
There's a huge appetite for social clubs in big cities, places where it's meant to be easier to meet people but there feels like an inherent lack of community. At R29 we've reported on that with the rise of book clubs, run clubs and walking groups. Baking and cooking clubs are just another iteration of that, but food has always been seen as a social experience and way to share culture. Smriti Joshi, psychologist at Wysa, says that there's a difference between friendship and community, and the latter can help us feel that we belong and are a part of a shared sense of purpose. A lack of social connections is one of the 'most robust' predictors of early mortality and poor mental health. 'Community isn't just a 'nice to have', it's a core human need,' Joshi says.
'On top of this, food is one of the most universal ways we express care,' she adds. 'Preparing or sharing a meal is often a quiet act of love. When we gather around food, we enter a kind of shared rhythm. We slow down, talk, laugh, listen. This co-regulation where our nervous systems begin to mirror and calm each other is incredibly grounding.' If ethnicity plays a role in the food we're sharing, that too is a powerful way of inviting others into 'a cultural moment, a family tradition, or a childhood memory'. Food can build bridges between people from different backgrounds.
Sunga isn't the only person using food as a means to connection. Polly Joshua, 30, from London, runs Snacks & Chats, a monthly meet-up that picks a different takeaway brand each time and charges attendees £5 to munch and meet. Usually 25 to 35 people come along. 'Food breaks the ice straight away,' Joshua says. 'No awkward intros, no pressure. People rock up solo all the time and end up chatting for hours. We've seen friendships form and pub trips happen afterwards. It's just easy. And I think that's what people want, a place where you don't have to 'know someone' to be there.' Joshua says the key to her events is they aren't 'over produced'. They meet somewhere low-key like a park, bring a blanket, and enjoy what's on offer. 'It's meant to feel like something your mate invited you to on a Saturday,' she adds. Joshua works in the food industry and as part of her job gets to try new takeaway brands everyday. After seeing the success of run clubs in bringing people together, she thought why not do the same but with the brands she's exposed to at work. 'Fitness and running clubs are great, but they're not for everyone (and definitely not me). Food felt like a leveller. Everyone eats. Everyone's welcome.'
This same sentiment is happening in intimate friendship circles. Caira Button, 31, from Chicago, started a cookbook club last summer, and had such a good reaction to it that she created a YouTube video explaining how others could do the same with their social networks. It involves everyone cooking a different recipe from one cookbook, so they all get to feast on a variety of dishes. 'I am super grateful to have many incredible female friendships in my life, but I was finding it hard to schedule time to see all of them on a regular basis,' Button says. 'I decided to start the club so I could get everyone together and be able to see them monthly and spend quality time together.' Eight of them commit each month, and mutual friends that didn't know each other beforehand are now good friends themselves. 'We look forward to getting together and catching up on life, all while eating good food each month,' she adds. 'It's honestly lower effort than you would think and yet extremely high impact. I leave each month with my belly full and my heart even fuller after sharing laughs and spending time with all of my girlfriends. I plan on continuing this forever.'
Lucy Dearlove, of food podcast Lecker, thinks there's lots to be gained from being in a cookbook club. 'Cooking for people is such a fundamental part of my friendships,' she says, and although she's not in a specific club herself, she's in the routine of cooking and baking for friends and family regularly — and they return those efforts. Using a cookbook to connect with people 'levels the playing field' in her opinion. You don't have to be an expert, and everyone is arriving at those recipes at the same time. 'It takes the pressure off of it if you're working through a cookbook together. Maybe you don't have a family background in food or cooking and that's completely valid,' Dearlove says. 'Your relationship with and knowledge of food doesn't have to be rooted in how you grew up.'
When Dearlove cooks for people, it's partly for the joy of trying something new, but it's also about communicating care. 'I like the idea that your relationship with food isn't fixed, and the potential of a cookbook club is to allow you to find new things and introduce new dishes that mean a lot to you, that you might have otherwise never have discovered.' And that's what these new social communities revolving around food are all about — enjoying food, but then going a step further and using it to create new friendships and nurture old ones.