It’s 6 p.m. on a recent Saturday night and chef Dominique Leach is busy getting ready for the multicourse dinner she will soon be serving. But she’s not at Lexington Betty’s Smokehouse, her popular South Side restaurant. Instead, Leach is in a creative workspace not far from Chinatown. In the center of the open room is one long table decorated with white tablecloths, candles and place settings for the 24 guests who will be arriving soon.
At the beginning of this year, Leach launched her once-a-month South Side + Friends Chef Series to stretch her culinary skills beyond the barbecue she’s won awards for and to bring folks together — both for herself in the kitchen with the guest chefs she collaborates with and those seated together at that table.
“There’s so much going on in the world, and it piles on top of our personal troubles that we’re going through,” says Leach. “It’s nice to sometimes be amongst strangers and have these organic moments where we can leave our troubles at the door and converse over some wine and a great meal.”
And she’s not the only one. Whether it’s restaurants offering a communal table along with traditional seating, monthly supper clubs like Leach’s or upscale spots where the only option is to theoretically rub shoulders with your dinner mates, communal dining is on the rise.
It’s hard to fathom now, but when Avec opened its first location on Randolph Street in 2003, communal dining didn’t exist in Chicago, Benihana and its group teppanyaki grill aside.
Donnie Madia, partner at One Off Hospitality, the group behind Avec and other Chicago restaurants, recalls having to nudge his partners on the concept of the long tables with bench seating for eight. At first, customers were a bit hesitant to share tables, recalls Madia, describing the seating process akin to playing Tetris.
But eventually diners embraced the idea and the inevitable conversations and sharing of dishes. The restaurant won a James Beard Award for its design in 2005.
“What we were trying to do was create community,” says Madia. “At the end of the day, dining is about bringing people together.”
It didn’t take long for other spots to follow suit with the then-newfangled style of dining. The Bristol, Urbanbelly, The Publican, Girl & the Goat, The Purple Pig and Green Street Smoked Meats all featured their own take on communal dining tables.
Then came the pandemic, and communal tables — along with restaurant dining in general — were put on hold. When it came back, creating the most distance between guests, sometimes with plastic barriers to further separate them, was a top priority. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.
During the day, West Town’s Bocadillo Market functions as a Spanish sandwich, pastry and coffee shop with a smattering of tables in the cozy space. On Friday and Saturday evenings, those tables are pushed together for group multicourse dinners for up to 24 guests.
“Our concept was always supposed to be this intimate supper spot,” says chef/owner James Martin, who relocated the restaurant from its original Lincoln Park location last August. “These dinners build community and allow us to connect over food in a disconnected world.”
The food served reflects Martin’s passion for Spanish cuisine — think tortilla española, crispy patatas bravas and paella studded with prawns and mussels — and he finds similarities to the Southern food he grew up on. Bocadillo’s dining style embraces the joy he found at home around the table.
“My parents always found a way to create space for friends and family,” he says.
Not too far away at soon-to-open Gilda, Spanish-inspired food will also be the focus. In addition to the traditional table seating for its tasting menu with dishes like egg brandade with potato foam and Basque cheesecake, there will be a communal 12-top table for walk-ins to enjoy tapas ordered at the pintxos bar.
“I think that table will offer an opportunity for people to make new friends and connections,” says Jeremy Leven, who is opening Gilda along with fellow chefs Rafael Esparza and Anthony Baier. “We’d love that to be a gathering place for people.”
On Monday nights, the entire restaurant will feature that convivial communal dining experience with extended hours.
“We want people to feel like they can let their hair down a little bit and get out of their comfort zones,” says Leven. “It feels like the vibe right now is that people want to get together.”
For restaurateur Billy Dec, it was the fond memories of the traditional kamayan feasts he had while visiting family in the Philippines every year that inspired him to recreate them when he opened Sunda, which has locations in River North and Fulton Market. The celebratory meal of grilled meat and seafood, presented on banana leaves instead of plates, is served on long communal tables.
Those tables also provide an in-between option of dining at the bar and a table.
“A lot of times people want the bar for its vibe, but they don’t want to crane their necks to look at their companions,” he says.
Additionally, there’s an inherent freedom that comes with dining at a communal table that allows people to come and go, says Dec.
“It’s less of a lift to dine there,” he says. “Anything that gets people off their couches and away from third-party delivery is a good thing.”
At Class Act, a fine dining “dinner party” restaurant in Bucktown that opened last summer, creating a communal dining experience is as important as the avant-garde tasting menu it serves.
“Our communal table is everything we do here,” says chef Nicolai Mlodinow. “One of the oldest ways for people to connect, learn about each other and make new friends is by breaking bread.”
To help ensure optimal conversation, Mlodinow worked with a designer to find a table that was large enough to fit 16 people, but minimized the distance between guests. A custom-made oval table proved the best fit.
To jump-start that connection, guests first gather for a pre-dinner drink in a room without chairs to encourage mingling. After dinner, a separate lounge lets them carry on those conversations.
“It’s a beautiful thing that more places are starting to do communal tables because that sense of connection and belonging is super important,” says Mlodinow.
Since August 2025, Emilio Enriquez and Hannah Roffers have been hosting monthly dinners at their apartment for eight guests. Enriquez, a sous chef at Trino, handles the food, while his partner, Roffers, does the optional wine and nonalcoholic beverage pairings. They call their supper club Bread & Salt, referencing the phrase “the bread and salt between us,” which embraces the value of strangers eating together.
“When you sit at the table and break bread, it’s committing yourselves to each other and your struggles, and forms a bond that can carry on after you leave the table in small and big ways,” says Enriquez. “That was very beautiful to me and encapsulates things I care about deeply: food, community and the political convictions I hold.”
For the four-course dinner, Enriquez sources seasonal ingredients from local purveyors. He weaves their stories and topical global issues into the meal, with a portion of the proceeds going to a charity. A mutual aid fund for those detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a recent recipient. Past dishes have included Lebanese dumplings stuffed with squash, handmade spaghetti with hedgehog mushrooms and arroz con leche, a nod to Enriquez’s Mexican heritage.
Diners receive a take-home gift of freshly baked cookies, along with an informal pamphlet the couple makes detailing some of the organizations they support and additional resources for those who want to dive deeper.
“Food is pivotal to everyone’s culture and lives and serves as a wonderful vehicle for re-energizing community building,” says Enriquez.
Back at South Side + Friends, Leach does plenty of community building of her own, starting with shining the spotlight on hospitality folks who call the South Side home. A collaboration with James Sanders of Sanders BBQ Supply Co. kicked off the series. Leach partnered with Justice of the Pies’ Maya-Camille Broussard for the second. Next up is chef Rahim Muhammad of Hyde Park’s Mahari.
For the most recent dinner, Leach collaborated with Kendra Anderson of Chicago’s Caviar Dream.
“She’s the founder of the first Black- and female-owned caviar company in the country,” said Leach when she introduced her to the dinner’s guests. Nouvie, a new Chicago-based de-alcoholized wine company, provided beverage pairings.
In between courses like deviled eggs with bacon crème fraiche and a dollop of caviar, crab and cornbread strata with paddle fish caviar and Lexington Betty’s brisket paired with caviar-topped baby potatoes, Leach and Anderson spoke about how they closely collaborated on each dish and the importance of bringing people together over food.
“Social media is taking something from us,” says Leach. “These types of outlets are something that allow you to embrace the conversation around you and the food. It feels good and it’s something that we all really need.”
Lisa Shames is a freelance writer.
