Read Zora O'Neill's posts on the Penguin Blog.

Introduction

What kind of food do you cook? When people find out we run an underground supper club, that’s often the first question out of their mouths.

We usually eyeball whoever’s asking. If we’re feeling polite, we say something vague about Southern and French (Tamara) or Middle Eastern and Indian (Zora). But the honest answer is simply: fucking fantastic food.

The ones who laugh when we say that, and nod in understanding— they’d fit right in with everyone who has been coming to our Sunday Night Dinners in Astoria, Queens, since 2003. They get that food doesn’t have to be trendy, or authentic, or totally organic. They’re happy to eat a Turkish street snack along with something we just happened to find in the market in our fabulously diverse neighborhood. They try out recipes from whatever cookbook we’re reading, and from ex-mothers-in-law. They savor the best greens from the farmers’ market, but also anything that looks good at the corner grocer. All our guests—and we— care about is: Is it fucking fantastic?

Along with this basic principle, we’re convinced that lounging around a big table after a multicourse feast, with the wine bottles nearly empty and the candles burning low, is one of the finer pleasures in life. All the work we’ve put into teaching ourselves to cook over the years culminates in this simple yet infinitely variable—and always satisfying—activity. Sunday Night Dinner began as a group of friends sitting around watching Sunday night TV. It has expanded into a twice-a-month supper club that’s open to friends and friends-we-haven’t-met-yet alike. Although we may cook dinner for twenty any day of the week, we still call it Sunday Night Dinner, because that’s the spirit every event shares: a chance to sit together around a table, regroup, restore, debate and generally enjoy our free time.

The Sunday Night Dinner story

We met in 2002, after several years in New York with virtually no money. As an actress, Tamara opened off-off-Broadway plays, but had spent even more time as a server at new restaurants like Mario Batali’s Babbo and Rocco DiSpirito’s Union Pacific. Then she took a far less stuffy gig waiting tables at Prune. Zora was considering a career change from freelance writer to café proprietor and talked her way into a line-cook job at Prune, a restaurant whose chef-owner, Gabrielle Hamilton, she admired for both her food and her writing. At the Prune Christmas party, Zora overheard Tamara talking about grabbing a souvlaki in her neighborhood and correctly surmised that Tamara also lived in predominantly Greek Astoria, Queens. We promptly bonded over countless drinks, shared a cab home and woke up and couldn’t remember any of the details of why we liked each other—just like a good first date.

No matter: We gradually pieced together that first conversation and very soon started cooking dinner together. Initially, the Sunday afternoon phone call from Tamara went something like this:

“Hey, wanna come over and slow-cook a pork roast and some cranberry beans?”

Who says no to a suggestion like that? Zora hopped on her bike with a few ingredients from her corner greengrocer and invited her old college friend and new neighbor, Peter (fresh off a job as a police officer, finishing grad school and getting down with his Greek roots in Astoria), and his girlfriend, Amy. Tamara called her opera-singing pals, Victoria the Sicilian and the lovely Mary Ann, as well as Val, a fellow server at Prune and a Greek who also appreciated Astoria.

After a few months, that evolved into:

“It’s the Sopranos season premiere! Let’s have a good old-fashioned red-checked-tablecloth dinner, with linguine with clams, bacalao fritters, Caesar salad and garlic bread!”

Hell, yes! By then, Tamara had had the pleasure of meeting Nicole (aka Golden), another neighbor, while doing a gay play involving lots of nudity and sacrilege—a bonding experience like no other. And Peter’s friend Katie now lived nearby—and she could totally understand the logic of the casual dinner party, because she’d done the same thing when she lived up in Boston, except on Wednesdays. She brought her hot-pink pants and some tasty blueberry pies, along with Boston veteran Joel and his girlfriend, Deb.

Not too long after, things started to snowball. Tamara would call Zora in a panic:

“Holy shit! Golden wants to bring her other friend too, so I have to go back to the butcher before he closes! Do you think I can drink my gin and tonic on my way there if I leave it in the Mason jar? The cops won’t arrest me or anything, will they? Ask Peter. And can you pick up some extra shallots on your way over?”

We rose to the occasion every weekend, no matter who showed up. It’s not like we set out to do anything big. We just started cooking together on Sunday nights because Tamara had a TV and there was good programming on, and everyone had to eat. When Tamara got TiVo, we no longer had to hustle to sit down in front of the TV—though we still tried to get an early start for the sake of regulars like Zora’s college friend Karine, a high school teacher with brutally early mornings. We started to spend the whole day on ridiculous projects—such as when Tamara’s friend Heather (better known as Mr. Shit) brought over some vintage Southern layer cake recipes. No watching TV meant Nicole could get the after- dinner dance party going in the kitchen, to entertain whoever was washing dishes. Now and then Tamara would invite a date.

Looking back, the real turning point was when Tamara invited Dapper Dan (his parents named him Michael Johnson). He was a regular at Prune who was far too well dressed for his surroundings, and he earned Tamara’s respect by eating everything in sight, often with his fingers. And even though she didn’t know him too well, and didn’t want to date him, she figured he was just the kind of person who’d enjoy our little Sunday gatherings.

He did. And he started inviting some of his friends. We went out and bought a few more folding chairs. And we carried on, spending the week scheming, planning bigger and more elaborate projects for ourselves. It was gratifying to read some intriguing recipe on Wednesday, then serve it to friends—and a few strangers—on Sunday. Zora had started writing travel guides, so she’d often come back with great ideas for dinner based on the tacos she’d eaten in Puerto Morelos or the greens she’d tasted in Aleppo. Tamara was still working as a waitress, so she got lots of ideas from fancy New York City chefs and her new Edna Lewis cookbook, a gift from Mr. Shit.

But then we noticed that we were both broke at the end of the month. Sunday Night Dinner was obviously the culprit. We tentatively asked for a donation— twenty bucks, maybe, if you’ve got it? Zora, who’d run a supper club before she met Tamara, knew they’d be lucky to break even, and didn’t want to earn money off the project, lest it start feeling like a pain-in-the-ass job. But at least this step kept us from resenting all our hungry friends when it came time to write the rent check.

As it turned out, not only were people happy to donate, but this meant they could now invite their friends with impunity because it no longer cost anyone but the diner any money. The last-minute repeat runs to the butcher increased, and, as if the New York City government were smiling down on us, the liquor laws were relaxed, so guests could buy booze on Sundays, on the way over—thus the “. . . and a bottle of wine” phrase got added to the suggested donation. Sunday Night Dinner was officially born—although by that time we were having the party on Saturdays just as often.

Now we have an e-mail list of more than four hundred names and regularly cook for twenty people every couple of weeks. It’s still not a job for either of us, and it’s a surprise and a challenge every time we do it.

It’s a surprise for everyone who comes as well—we rarely cook the same thing twice, nor is the guest list ever duplicated. It all starts with an e-mail invitation describing what we’ve decided to cook—sort of an extended explanation of “fucking fantastic food!”