Community Dining Syracuse helps people with different age, background, religion connect to one another

Are there times you want to go out for a nice dinner but don’t feel like eating alone or bothering to call around for someone to go with? Are you a single person or a couple who would enjoy interesting conversation with people you’ve never met before and with no obligation to meet again?

Then you would like Community Dining Syracuse — or CDS.

This is a new idea for developing the community by bringing people together over monthly dinners at interesting restaurants. Once the idea catches on, we hope more Central New York restaurants will offer the option to join a community table so that “eating out alone doesn’t mean being alone.”

You order from the regular menu and pay just for what you ordered without splitting the check with the others at your table. If you want two glasses of wine and the most expensive dinner on the menu, you don’t have to feel guilty or, conversely, if you don’t drink and are not a big eater, you’re not paying for everyone else’s meal by splitting the check. This is usually more difficult for restaurants to do, but the restaurants that sign on to this concept have agreed to do individual checks.

There are many reasons to try CDS. We are fortunate enough to live in a country that is a true melting pot, but how often do we have the opportunity to take advantage of that? Though many of us would welcome the opportunity to get to know those who differ from ourselves culturally, religiously, racially or age-wise, it is often not easy to make those connections. You really can’t walk into someone else’s social club or faith group and say, “Let’s get to know each other and discuss issues of mutual interest, whether it’s politics, national and state affairs, community concerns, or how ‘bout them Yankees?”

Talking about the same issues with people who have different perspectives than you do makes for a really exciting evening. As one of the recent CDS participants said, “It’s amazing how different we are from each other but how much we have in common.”

Then there is the intergenerational aspect. For younger people, to bounce career and relationship ideas around with people older than themselves, but who are not relatives or colleagues, is an opportunity that comes without the baggage that those other relationships often bring. And for the person who has “been there, done that,” being able to share their experiences and life lessons with a different generation leads to wonderful discussions that you often can’t have with your own children.

For this first year of CDS, each dinner will be at a different restaurant and hopefully, additional restaurants will choose to offer community tables on their own. Often there will be discussion topics that the table can choose to use or ignore. Our first couple of dinners centered around life transitions and led to fascinating exchanges, but some tables went off on their own discussions and had a great time.

Our diversity is reflected in whom we have chosen for partners. The original partners are AARP, the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Greater Syracuse, 100 Black Men and, recently added, George Kilpatrick, media personality. And we will continue to expand to new partners and participants to increase our diversity.

To get information about the upcoming dinners, go to the Internet and type in: meetup.com/communitydiningsyracuse. You can choose to use just your first name or your whole name, picture or no picture, and give as much or as little information about yourself as feels comfortable.

No, we are not a dating service and I think being clear about that makes it more comfortable to participate. By signing up, you will get e-mail notices of scheduled dinners and topics, but there is no obligation to attend or fee involved in participating, and you will not be sold anything.

I originally anticipated about 10 people would attend, but our first two dinners attracted about 30. Half of those signed up on the meetup site and others received personal invitations, but in the interest of getting everyone the same information, from now on we will use meetup.com/communitydiningsyracuse as our main means of communication.

Please consider joining us.

I will be at most of the dinners and am always excited to meet the new people who have signed up as well as those who have attended before.