I Don't Want Dinner Unless It's With Will

My newest obsession is sitting at a table with strangers, eating dinner cooked by a 24-year-old.

Industry: Private-ish Dining (idk if that’s an “industry”, just go with it)

CX Themes: Attention to Detail, Community, Inclusivity, Authenticity

TL;DR: If you live in Michigan (or will be here anytime soon), find a way to experience a dinner with Will.

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About two weeks ago, my friend Emma DM’ed me a post from @dinnerswithwill on Instagram and asked if I wanted to go with her to a four-course dinner the following Saturday in Ann Arbor. I was in, but I didn’t fully understand what exactly I was signing up for, or who Will was outside of what I could infer from a quick stalk on his Instagram page. His food looked fresh/clean/delicious af and he looked friendly/hip/cool af.

Spoiler alert: My assumptions were spot on - Will Brinkerhoff is a tall glass of everything, and so are the dining experiences he creates.

Saturday, March 30th at 9:30 pm rolled around. I was sitting amongst strangers in a candlelit living room, slowly spooning bites from the final course: a ramekin filled with rhubarb and vanilla custard with strawberries macerated in Meyer lemon (swoon). Van Morrison was playing and Will was telling our table stories about his time training under Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. I was under the influence of only 6-ish ounces of a Meyer Lemon Tom Collins, thinking: this is what life is about. Good food, good company, good music, good vibes.

We finished our conversations and final sips of the maple sap from the trees in the backyard, and Emma and I grabbed our coats and said goodbye to Will. He hugged me like I had known him my whole life, even though it had only been three hours, and thanked us for coming. When I stepped through his front door back into the crisp Michigan air I felt beyond fulfilled. My cup was full. No; overflowing.

Will’s food was delicious and he is great, but there are other ingredients at play here that left me with the feeling that I just had one of the most wholesome evenings of my life.

Do Talk To Strangers

Aside from a sole experience with Outstanding In the Field, the concept of dining with strangers was new, and relatively uncomfortable, to my naturally introverted self. I knew this dining experience was similar to OITF in that my friend and I wouldn’t be sitting solo at our own table, we’d be seated at a big table with people we didn’t know. But the difference with Will’s experience was the presence of a purpose. We weren’t just sitting with strangers, we were encouraged to speak to each other about trajectories for the warmer days ahead and how we’ll spend our time under the sun. Will clearly articulated the purpose of this emergence dinner and stuck to it.

In the book “The Art of Gathering”, Priya Parker states that “connection doesn’t happen on its own.. you have to design your gatherings for the kinds of connections you want to create. Chapter three discusses why you shouldn’t be a “chill” host and Priya shares her hot take on the fact that “chill” is a terrible attitude when it comes to hosting gatherings. While Will seemed like a relatively relaxed guy, he wasn’t a “chill” host who left his guests to fend for themselves. He governed us - gently and respectfully, and encouraged us to communicate with each other around the intended purpose.

One Price Does Not Fit All

How I view spending $10 versus how Jeff Bezos views spending $10 is different. Will must agree because, for this four-course dinner, he posed a sliding scale of $75 - $125 per person. Offering this sliding scale pay range offered an inclusive and accessible entry to people with varying budgets and preferences for what they’re comfortable spending. We love accessibility!

Enabling The Spectacular Now

Maybe it was the eucalyptus oil Will trailed across the top of his 183-year-old wood-burning stove. Maybe it was the nostalgic playlist playing. Maybe it was hearing Abby, a local photographer, tell our table a wild story about someone wanting to rent her studio space for an interesting activity. Whatever it was, I was there. I wasn’t scrolling on my phone. I wasn’t thinking about the yard work I needed to do tomorrow. I was in the present. In a world where the average human picks up their phone ~150 times a day, Will managed to create an environment that didn’t leave space for me to think about anything other than the spectacular now. He designed a temporary world; one of those in-the-moment, forget-your-phone-exists (aside from the need to snap a few photos, of course) type of experiences. It was refreshing, fulfilling, and a solid reminder that we need more of these experiences in our lives.