Party time, excellent (actually, it would be excellent if *you* threw a party)
Check out my self-guided restaurant crawl & read my tips for planning your own!
Almost every year, I arrange a restaurant crawl for a group of friends. This activity hits a lot of my pleasure points: trying foods from around the world, planning fun things, making people happy through explorative experiences, & walking.
This weekend we snacked our way through Seattle’s Pike Place Market, tucking into tiny mom & pop eateries that could barely contain our group of eight. Sure, Pike Place is a crowded tourist destination famous for flying fish, but it’s also home to Oriental Mart, a 54 year old Filipino lunch counter honored with a James Beard American Classics Award; Turkish Delight, a family-run Turkish restaurant opened in 1982; and Lands of Origin, where you can partake in an Ethiopian coffee ceremony and nibble on exceptional, homemade sweet and savory pastries representing countries across the African continent.
I’ll share all the places we ate & give tips on how to plan your own restaurant crawl below!
But yesterday’s munching marathon, a joyous day with friends under rays of rare Seattle sunshine, got me thinking about an article I read earlier this week in The Atlantic:
Americans Need to Party More
We’re not doing it as much as we used to. You can be the change we need.
The author, Ellen Cushing, writes:
“Many Americans are alone, friendless, isolated, undersexed, sick of online dating, glued to their couches, and transfixed by their phones.”
Roughly one in eight Americans reports having no friends.
A lot of people never see their friends, stymied by the logistics of scheduling.
Only 4.1 percent of Americans attended or hosted a social event on an average weekend or holiday in 2023.
Only 28 percent of respondents said they would “probably” or “definitely” throw a party for their next birthday.“
“This is what a group psychologist would call ‘diffusion of responsibility.’” writes Cushing. “Everyone wants to attend parties, but no one wants to throw them.”
YES, ELLEN, YES! Why aren’t people planning parties anymore??
As “A Connector,” I am on the far opposite end of the spectrum — I LOVE planning events & throwing parties. One of my best friends and I enjoy planning so much, we keep a running list of ideas (an all-dip potluck! a bring-an-embarassing-teenage-journal-entry-and-read-it-aloud party!) and last year reached new Type A heights when we scheduled an actual meeting to go over all our ideas, find dates for them on our calendars & divide and conquer the details.
We arrange clothing exchanges, a monthly craft club, a monthly themed cooking club, birthday parties, and weekend trips. I organize yearly trips to the pumpkin patch, throw an annual Hanukkah party & a Passover seder. She hosts summer pool parties.
But she and I sometimes lament that we don’t go to many parties — because not as many people seem to be throwing them. It’s not that we’re seeking reciprocation for all the effort we put into our borderline psychotic social tendencies, it’s just really fun to go to someone else's party!
I understand that folks are introverted, folks don’t have planning brains, parties can be expensive, overwhelming and anxiety inducing & not everyone has a home set up for hosting company.
But as The Atlantic writer says in her piece, you can bring a group of people together on a smaller, less burdensome scale. A casual picnic in the park, an afternoon at a bowling alley where everyone pays their own way & you have zero mess to clean up. Make it a potluck! Ask a friend to co-host! You don’t have to fund the whole shebang!
She writes:
“We are obligated to create the social world we want. Intimacy, togetherness—the opposite of the crushing loneliness so many people seem to feel—are what parties alchemize,” Cushing writes. “These are things anyone can have, but like everything worth having, they require effort.”
”This year, resolve to throw two parties — if every party has at least 10 guests (anything less is not a party!) and everyone observes host-guest reciprocity, then everyone gets 20 party invitations a year.”
Honestly, 20 parties a year sounds like a LOT — make it a goal to throw one! And we can officially redefine “party” to mean, “gather people together somewhere to do something.” If you’re one of those people who worries no one will show up — THEY WILL. They always show up. At least, most of them will. They’ll even take their shoes off if you tape a handwritten sign to your front door, and bring wine or salty, crunchy snacks from Trader Joe’s.
Here are my tips for planning a restaurant crawl for your people, along with photos of what we ate on this weekend’s walking/eating adventure:
Choose a neighborhood with restaurants/bakeries/cafes that you’re curious about that are in walking distance of each other. Half a mile between some places is great - that’s about a 10 minute walk. Or do a bicycle crawl! Or a subway crawl! But some walking/biking is key to not feeling disgustingly full.
Pick a theme! My first-ever food crawl was in Seattle’s International District & focused on noodles and dumplings from different Asian cuisines. Since then, I have chosen neighborhoods that boast a diverse variety of foods, so we can try dishes from all over the world in a single day. I like to pick cuisines or dishes that folks may not have tried before. But you could also do a pizza crawl, a bakery/pastry crawl, an ice cream crawl, etc.
Oriental Mart: the owner offered to make us a combo plate with everything on the menu & she was THE BEST! This was everyone’s favorite meal of the day. 3. Keep the size of the group manageable. Since we’re going to small, mom-and-pop restaurants, I like to keep the group to no more than 6-8 people so we can all fit at a table or two.
Don’t order too much food! At the start of a crawl, everyone’s hungry and excited and it’s easy to over-order. But that’s a rookie move! If you want to make it to four or five places, and not feel sick, you’ll want to order just enough for everyone to get a satisfying taste of each dish. If you really love a place, you can always come back for a full meal!
To keep things moving, I look at the menus ahead-of-time and decide which dishes to order. If someone really wants to try something, we’ll get it! But, generally, people seem happy having the day completely planned out for them.
Miss Cafe serves Turkish food: manti (tiny boiled meat dumplings with garlicky yogurt sauce) & lahmacun (Flatbread with marinated ground beef, red pepper, tomato and herbs) To keep things simple, I order and pay for everything, add up the totals & have everyone Venmo me their share at the end of the day. This time, we visited five places and it was $40 each, which was more than usual, but still a pretty good deal!
From the feedback I’ve gotten, ya’ll loved listening to this episode as much as I loved making it. Ani DiFranco is an iconic, feminist, singer/songwriter, and as she prepares to head out on tour for her TWENTY THIRD ALBUM, she wants to remind people that she’s not just that chick who sang your favorite songs in the 90s. She’s been making music ever since!
If you already listened, check out the mini bonus episode from last week where Ani talks about what music and food she’s raised her family on in New Orleans:
If you like the show, please do me a favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
And if you prefer to listen to your podcasts on YouTube (I was surprised to learn that this is where MOST people are listening these days!), the show is now available there as well!
ONE MORE THING!!
I have ONE cookbook event left & I’d be so thrilled if you came — it’s at the Stroum Jewish Community Center in Mercer Island, Washington and your ticket includes SNACKS from the book (my hummus recipe that I have bragged about for years)! I’ll also be signing books and schmoozing after the talk.
If you already bought a copy of Open Sesame, but would like to come, you can purchase a less expensive ticket that doesn’t include the book.
Anyone who purchases a ticket is automatically entered into a raffle to win a copy of OPEN SESAME and a jar of Soom tahini (one of my absolute favorites) so you can go home and get cooking! Winner will be announced at the book talk!
XO
Rachel Belle
I've been following you ever since a friend shared the Your Last Meal episode 3 women all 100 years old. Now I follow all things Rachel Belle and I have your Open Sesame cook book. Made the humus with the "good" tahini, one of the ones you listed. It was incredibly good. Yesterday I made the Pineapple smoothie, simply yummy. I always discover something new! My word for 2025 is encourage, be encouraged and encourage others. You are encourage me in such an amazing joyful way and I thank you! Thanks for being you! And come to Traverse City Michigan in the summer!
Oriental Mart really is the best. As much as I love working from home, having a job downtown meant being able to regularly check out all the places in the market. I was at OM 2-3x a month.
I always like the idea of hosting more than the reality; doing something around the city is a good compromise. A friend and I once had a Jewish brisket-off, and I gladly took mine over to her place a couple hours in advance for the reheating.
Another friend and I have been doing an annual brewery walk for over 10 years - between new breweries and closures, we've never followed the same route twice. Walking across the Ballard Bridge in freezing rain wasn't necessarily the best planning (started at Urban Family when it was in Magnolia), but it's still a fond memory :)