Handwritten menus, DIY floral arrangements, aesthetic tablescapes and smiling, laughing, beautifully dressed friends… dinner parties have taken over the For You Page, Pinterest boards and Instagram carousels this year. It’s all well and good if you’ve got a solid group of friends to dine with, but what if – like a growing number of young people – you don’t have people to fill the seats and drink the wine with? That’s exactly how 26-year-old Elikia Cardot felt when she decided to invite five complete strangers over for dinner at her home, Apartment 24.
Elikia moved to Sydney at age 11, having grown up in Gabon and France. As she got older, Elikia found herself travelling out of the country frequently to satisfy a craving she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “I was tired of Sydney. It tends to be very cliquey and is actually quite small. I’ve been here for 14-15 years and it had gotten a bit repetitive, so I travelled to escape.” Travel and holidays didn’t fill the hole at home, though, and only increased the loneliness of having lots of individual friends and acquaintances scattered across the globe without a core, deeply connected group of friends to return to.
In a truly shocking twist, it was a finance bro that offered the key to deeper connection. “I heard about this man who had moved to Dubai and he was working in finance. He started hosting his friends and cooking food from his childhood. People loved the food so much that they started to invite their own friends to his dinner parties until it became completely attended by strangers,” Elikia explains. “I just thought that was amazing and I’ve always loved to cook and host so I thought ‘Well, I haven’t tried that, so I can’t fully say hate Sydney yet.'”
Supper clubs are not a new phenomenon – there’s lots of media buzz for ticketed, group bookings at hip restaurants (think ClubSup) that give you one night of fun and interesting conversation. Social media marketer Jessie Wright also went viral for ‘dinner dates with strangers’ TikTok series, a similar quest to make friends in a new city. But the vibe of Apartment 24 dinners is distinctly different. For one thing – Elikia is bringing strangers into her home. The anxious girly in me cannot help but ask her why on Earth she chose to do it this way.
Elikia listed a dinner event at her home as an ‘Experience’ on Airbnb. To her delight and anxiety, one person booked in – but only one. The dinner party was listed for five. Four more RSVPs came from posts in Facebook groups like ‘Bondi Local’ and ‘French People in Sydney’… and soon enough, five total strangers arrived at Elikia’s apartment for a home-cooked meal, wine and conversation guided by a deck of We’re Not Really Strangers cards. That first dinner would soon come to change not only Elikia’s world, but the lives of many others too. “It made me realize other people are looking for the same thing I was. I started getting a lot more messages on these groups and directly interacting with them rather than advertising it… It really changed the way I went about [planning the dinners].” Now, there is a waitlist that eagerly awaits the announcement of new dates for an Apartment 24 dinner.
At home it’s personal, it’s intimate and that’s the experience I wanted. I felt a lot more control in my own space.
“At home it’s personal, it’s intimate and that’s the experience I wanted. I felt a lot more in control in my own space and I designed the space so that I could fill it with people,” Elikia says. Personally, I could never – but it’s clear Elikia was made to do this. She treats each new dinner party like a friendship matchmaking service, carefully working through the waitlist to hand-select a group of people who could genuinely build a relationship once they leave her apartment. “I used to pick people who I thought I’d be friends with, because that was initially the easiest way to go about it. But now more and more it’s also ‘Who do I think would be great friends with each other?’ You look at their aesthetic, you look at what they say about themselves and what they do even for work. It’s been quite fun to mash them together.” After hosting 20 dinner parties and counting, Elikia says she can “read people and their vibe clearly and quickly.”
@sunnyknowsbest First dinner of the year! 💕 #dinnerwithstrangers #dinnerparty #dinewithme #strangerstofriends #foodtiktok #sydney #latelunch #connectthroughfood #apartment24 ♬ Gang (feat. Sarah Maison) – Anoraak
Throughout our conversation it’s clear what Elikia loves the most now is seeing how other people interact. Unlike at a restaurant or in a one-on-one date, dinner parties at home are fluid and in constant motion. Guests enter and stand maybe a little nervously; postures sitting at the table gradually relax; eventually, the might move to the living room, sprawl out on her couch and on the floor, laughing with wine glasses in hand (the point that Elikia deems the night a success). There are side conversations, the exchanging of phone numbers and social media, group chats created in the following days.
Elikia is attuned to how the Apartment 24 dinners and evolving, and thoughtful about what they could become. “I think it’s starting to shift away from me. It’s not just a personal thing anymore,” she says. “There are so many people who want to make those connections, it’s been more satisfying to see people connect together. We’ve had people connect from two different separate dinners – they didn’t actually meet at the same dinner, but got together through word of mouth. That was a really cool moment!”
While the ‘connection crisis’ or the ‘loneliness pandemic’ or whatever you want to call it is affecting young people across the board, as a fellow woman of colour it’s not lost on me how much effort Elikia puts into Apartment 24. There is a tinge of sadness in realising there is perhaps more emotional risk, and more literal work, involved in looking for deeper friendships in a country where white is the default. But it makes me even more in awe of Elikia’s unwavering optimism about friendship and her selflessness in making it possible for others. “I was feeling this lack of connection in a place that I found boring. And it sort of showed me that first of all, I will not be giving up on a place without trying at least a million things to love it. But I also think I love people a lot more than I expected.”
More inspiring interviews:
Being Seen: Milo Hartill on How You Can Demand Better On-Screen Representation
Yassmin Abdel-Magied On Tackling Social Change Like an Engineer
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