The Easy Connection of Cookbook Club
How to start one, how to join one, how to keep on going
First: Federal Unionist Network (FUN) Fundraising Update: You can find all cashout receipts here. The big chunk went through Siena Chiang (as part of a targeted donation through Organize Workers); the handful of donations I’ve received these past two weeks I just donated directly. Thank you again for your trust and support — we were able to direct over $22,000 to immediate efforts to fight back against DOGE’s indiscriminate firings.
Also: If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, you missed a real unexpected romp of a thread in What Are You *Not* Buying on the Internet and this exploration of Perfect Imperfections, which made me cackle and tear-up, a perfect combo.
You also get access to all of paywalled (more personal) essays, the more utilitarian threads (like the upcoming Culture Study Classifieds), the weekly Things I Read and Loved, and the monthly mega-recs post. All that, and the knowledge that you’re paying for the content you find valuable.
Paid Subscribers: You keep the paywall off posts like this one. Your subscriptions make this work possible and sustainable, and I’m so grateful for you.
The first time I heard about cookbook club, it was from a Culture Study reader: in her early 40s, mom to two elementary-age kids, Eliz was in an era of what she called “friendship rebuilding.” She heard about the cookbook club through her local Buy Nothing Page, which, like a lot of these groups, had gradually morphed into something much more expansive than just a place to list an old piece of furniture.
The club meets once a month, on Sunday night, from five to seven — and it really ends at seven, so people can go home and get to bed and whoever’s hosting can clean up. The eleven members decide on a cookbook every month, and everyone picks a different recipe (there are a lot of Google spreadsheets) to make. Then they sit down to try all the recipes — and talk about the process of making each one. “If anyone's recipe doesn't turn out, we just say it's the cookbook author's fault,” Eliz told me. “Because we love each other so much, and we’re all great cooks, so nobody feels ashamed if they bring some bad, or if something flops.”
It’s different than a book club, too: book clubs can be incredible, but they can also be super annoying or guilt-inducing, particularly when no one seems to find or make the time to read the book. But for these women, all of whom are moms, the cookbook club offers them something pretty spectacular: “this is like a reclaiming of our hobby,” Eliz explained. “And we’re doing it for people who appreciate the food that we’re making. Like, nobody’s gonna be like, this is too spicy, or ew, or anything like that. It’s so satisfying.”
It’s also an opportunity to have one really, really good meal a month — often better than they could get at a restaurant, with the opportunity to try more dishes. “We’re picking these really interesting books, and we’re all picking really interesting recipes,” Eliz told me. “It just feels like such a nice thing we’re doing for ourselves.”
Like most community-building stuff that actually works, it’s not just regular, but the lift is relatively low. “We’re going into each other’s home, which are not always big enough or that clean, because, you know, there’s just regular life happening there,” Eliz said. “Everybody has a messy house; there’s not a lot of performance. I remember when I told my mom about the club, she asked me if I was gonna rent tables and chairs and linens when it was my turn to host. And I was like, no, that’s not the point! We’re all just gonna crowd around whatever table there is.”
During the pandemic, the cookbook club turned into an ongoing Marco Polo chat about what they were scrounging around to make every night. At one point, they tried to cook every strawberry cake recipe on the internet, and review each of them on Marco Polo. They still rely on the app for ongoing asynchronous communication, but they’re also back in person every month — and have started doing a yearly weekend retreat. The food’s gonna be amazing.
Cookbook club can be something you do to regularize hanging out with friends you already have — or it can be a way to gradually build intimacy with people you kinda know, like the women from the Buy Nothing Group, but don’t really know how to know better. And you don’t have to have a house, or a bunch of fancy cookware, or sophisticated cooking skills, or years of cooking experience to do it. It doesn’t have to be a lapsed hobby, in other words — it can be the beginning of a new one.
To underline that point, I reached out to Stephanie Lau, whose New York cookbook clubs went viral last year, to quickly talk about how she got started in her tiny apartment, how she’s funneled demand into other cookbook clubs, and tips on starting your own. And scroll to the end for information on the FIRST EVER **CULTURE STUDY** COOKBOOK CLUB!!
You’ve been documenting your (incredibly beautiful) home meals on your Instagram for some time, and clearly love the process of making, creating, and sharing food with others. So I’d love to hear about the decision to jump from making food to show the internet, and making food (from a cookbook) to share with an in-person community.
Were you hungering for more in-person interactions? What did you like about the community on Instagram, and what was still missing? How did you first hear about cookbook clubs, and what made it feel possible in your own life?
I first learned about cookbook clubs when I moved to New York in January 2023. It was a bit of a leap, as I didn’t know anybody in the city. So, in pursuit of friendship, I was on Bumble BFF and came across a profile that said “come join my cookbook club!” We never connected (their loss!), but that is what planted the seed in my mind.
I’ve always loved to host and make things for other people. My partner and I hosted BBQs, made cakes for friends, and even cooked a bunch of dishes from the Dishoom cookbook for a friend’s birthday dinner (without calling it a cookbook club).
It wasn’t until December 2023 when a friend let me pick out a few cookbooks for Christmas that the idea reemerged. I love cookbooks but practically speaking, I don’t have enough time or energy to try everything in my growing collection of cookbooks…myself, that is. While I love many things about cookbook club, my main motivation was (selfishly, in part) a solution to that problem — collectively eating through a majority of the recipes in any book without having to cook it all.
Take us back to that first cookbook club — which took place in your tiny apartment. How did you decide on the cookbook? How did you recruit people to participate? What went according to plan — and what didn’t?
The first event felt casual, no expectations. First decision was the book. I decided on Tenderheart, by Hetty Lui McKinnon, as it was new to me at the time and I have several vegan and veggie friends.
I surveyed my close friends story to see how many people might be interested in coming. There were probably around thirty. For context, I live in a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment — about 500 square feet. I figured not everyone would be able to make it, so I was set on twenty.
Next, I had to figure out seating. One of the most important things to me in any gathering is that everyone needs a place to sit, relax and enjoy their food. Preferably not on the floor. I looked to my building’s group chat for chairs and my neighbourhood’s buy-nothing group for an extra table.
Everything was pretty much perfect. My friends from different areas of my life meshed well together. The only thing was that I didn’t have enough cutlery. But someone volunteered to run to the bodega and get some, so it worked itself out.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Your cookbook club went viral on Tiktok, you made appearances on podcasts, you did a bunch of interviews — at some point you realized that you had to start teaching people how to do their own cookbook clubs instead of running one for 2000 people on your own. How have you put limits on your own cookbook club — while also attempting to expand others’ access to established clubs?
The limits that are placed on cookbook club are mainly related to my own personal capacity and the availability of a venue. I’m one person (with the help of some friends) and I have a full time job that is not food or event related.
That being said, there are several other factors at play. If I do something, I do it all the way. I felt invigorated by the feeling of connecting relative strangers united by a cookbook and positive feedback from attendees. I wanted to commit to doing a monthly event for the entirety of 2024 to see what I might get out of it.
I also don’t like to leave people out. There were over 2000 people that expressed their interest in attending and having only 20-50 people per event would leave a lot of people out of it.
But 2000 people was also beyond my personal capacity. My solution was to empower other people to host their own cookbook clubs. Surely in a group of 2000 there were a few that enjoyed hosting. If you want to do something, please don’t expect a singular individual to make that happen…do it yourself!
The plan was to have little to no involvement other than providing guidance to take pressure off of myself. I wrote up a document, got people into discord and let them run with it themselves and in different neighbourhoods throughout New York City and beyond. It worked out! There are five to ten monthly events from other cookbook clubs that anyone is welcome to attend.
You wrote an end-of-year piece about what you’ve learned over the past year. There’s a lot of wisdom in there — I especially appreciated the point about how the secret to a “successful” event is really making sure it aligns with your values. Can you talk more about what that means in practice, both in terms of the nitty gritty details and the overarching thinking about why events like this matter?
Time, energy and mental headspace are finite resources. As much as I enjoy hosting/planning/bringing people together, it got a little repetitive and exhausting after the first few iterations. And because I committed to doing events for the year, I couldn’t back out but I had to figure out what truly made it impactful to me. I thought a lot about how I could use the cookbook club as a platform.
The world is constantly in a state of frenzy. So, where can we lend a helping hand? With the help of my friend Norhan, we hosted a cookbook club featuring Bethlehem by Fadi Kattan that doubled as a fundraiser, and invited a rep from the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund to share their work. My friend Justine and I also hosted a bake sale in support of Neighbours Together, a soup kitchen and social service center in Brooklyn.
Collectively, as a group we were capable of more than cooking, and the success of those types of events showed that.
You’ve been very deliberate about picking cookbooks like that highlight the expansiveness of Asian-authored Asian cookbooks. What’s been meaningful about hosting gatherings that explore this depth and breadth?
If you enjoy cooking, you probably also enjoy the exploratory nature of unfamiliar cuisines or mastering a new technique or learning how to make a dish from your favourite restaurant.
There are lots of requests to cover books that are widely known or already celebrities in other spaces. I see every cookbook club as an opportunity to share what I’m curious about and shine the spotlight on stories that we should know more about (specifically those of women and BIPOC voices).
Finally, if someone needs a word of encouragement to actually try to make this happen — what would you tell them?
Just do it! Don’t think about it too much. All you need is a space, a cookbook and a few friends. (You can read more tips/reflections here ).
Subscribe to Stephanie’s newsletter below — and here’s a link to sign-up for local cookbook clubs in the NYC area.
And if you want some very clear suggestions on how to *keep your cookbook club going* once it gets off the ground, one of the members of Eliz’s cookbook club put together this very straightforward list of suggestions.
**Now, what about a Culture Study Cookbook Club?**
I’ve been thinking about a perfect first cookbook selection: I wanted something that’s been out for a bit (thus slightly more accessible through the library), with a ton of recipes and a lot of options for people with all sorts of dietary restrictions. Bonus if it was something that I knew a number of Culture Study readers already owned. (I’m limiting this to paid subscribers, so if you can’t swing a subscription right now and really want to participate, just shoot me an email)