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By Root 1067 0

called Jo-Jo, the Chinese name for a mother’s younger brother, always attended family events with us. He was very close to us; he had even lived in my parents’ home until I was about five, before moving to his own apartment in Queens. This year, however, had brought another downturn for my aging senior relatives. My maternal grandfather, or Gong-Gong to me and my brother, had grown too frail to care for himself. He moved in with Jo-Jo that fall, and my uncle was doing his best to look after him with the aid of a social worker a few days a week. There was no way my grandfather could travel to New Jersey anymore, and since the social worker was off on Thanksgiving, Jo-Jo needed to stay with him in Queens. Of course, we planned to go see them the day after.

It is said that the act of cooking and eating together was the catalyst of civilization. The need to prepare food and to consume it is what tamed humans into living in interdependent societies instead of individually as hunter-gatherers. Agriculture centered us as home-dwelling beings rather than as members of nomadic herds. People settled down, built cities, and began taking up certain skills to fulfill various needs of the community-many of which, at least in the beginning, were related to eating.

Not only did communal supping forge communities and play a large role in defining cultures, but it also offered people something a little more than plain sustenance. Coming to the table for an unquestionably enjoyable act-eating-allowed for human interaction either meaningful or mundane—essentially, the opportunity to commune.

It’s often lamented that in today’s eat-on-the-go culture, so increasingly prevalent in urban areas like New York, we are missing out on something very valuable. We have yet to see what will become of us if the trend continues. But forecasts have been portentous: “Americans will once again become a lonely race of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers prowling the darkened city streets, wallets honed and sharpened, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting pint of pasta primavera and snare the slow-footed slice of pâté de campagne,” Jeffrey Steingarten wrote with comic melodrama in 1988. Just think of it: When you sit at your desk eating alone, or eat as you drive alone in your car, you’re chipping away at eons of development in human civilization!

I had a growing number of friends and acquaintances in Brooklyn, however, who were excited about cooking and feasting with one another. Potlucks and food parties that involved gathering together for anything from full dinners to just hors d’oeuvres were all the rage—even put together on the fly. Staying in and eating something delicious had become, to my great fortune, a common way of hanging out.

Earlier that fall, my friend Becca and I paid a visit to a monthly communal dinner buffet called GRUB. It was housed in an industrial warehouse loft in Brooklyn called Rubulad, inhabited by a loose collective that often hosted parties, music shows, and other events in the space. Much of the food prepared at GRUB dinners was freeganed, too.

Becca was running late, so I arrived at the building before her. Once I climbed up the long staircase to the loft, the first thing that greeted me was a rocking horse dressed up in carnivalesque beads and brightly colored Christmas tree lights hanging from a wall at the top of the landing. In the windowless first room there was a small stage with a sequined purple curtain, empty in the half darkness. I had been to Rubulad once before, to see a music show at night. Then, the place was so bustling with bodies and I had walked through so many twisting, pitch-black hallways and separate rooms to get to the area where the band was playing that I had no idea what it really looked like. In the daytime, it bore a resemblance to an abandoned funhouse ride.

I went ahead into the main living room. Several people were standing around, talking, and in the spacious but ramshackle-looking kitchen, there were about ten or so people busy cooking. Each one seemed hard at work in his or her own station—some