What better way to celebrate than by turning home into the perfect venue for a memorable gathering? From themed brunches and board-game evenings to musical baithaks, book readings and chef-led dinners, urban Indians are opening their living rooms, gardens and terraces to a new kind of social life. Away from packed bars and crowded restaurants, these intimate gatherings offer a more personal way to connect, discover shared interests and meet new people. The appeal lies in the experience as much as the setting. A terrace dinner with fellow jazz lovers or a living-room concert brings people closer, making conversation easier and performances more personal. Increasingly, these are not just private parties for friends and family. Hosts and community organisers are welcoming strangers through platforms such as SortMyScene and AllEvents, as well as Instagram and WhatsApp. They typically promote these events through Instagram Stories, dedicated community pages and WhatsApp groups, where details, invitations and registration links circulate through friends, followers and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Some hosts are also turning their gatherings into small businesses, charging guests for evenings that cover food, drinks, décor, and entertainment. Whether it is a chef’s supper club, an intimate gig or a board-game night, guests pay for a thoughtfully curated experience and the chance to meet like-minded people. The model sits somewhere between a house party and a pop-up venue, with the host doubling as curator and entrepreneur. Opening one’s home to strangers, however, raises questions about privacy, security, neighbours objecting to it, and costs. The challenge is to keep gatherings distinctive without making them feel overly produced. After all, their charm lies in the intimacy that commercial venues can struggle to replicate. Bars, restaurants, and clubs will continue to have their place, but homes are emerging as an alternative for those seeking more meaningful social experiences. The living room is not killing the cocktail bar; it is simply giving it competition. And for hosts who can turn a terrace into a concert venue or a dining room into a supper club, the party might just pay for itself.
The loneliness of urban dwellings
As British author Johann Hari observes in Lost Connections, loneliness is not about being alone but about feeling disconnected from the people around us. For those weary of crowded bars and predictable lounges, home hospitality is offering a more intimate way to connect. That was the idea behind Upstairs with Us, a series of musical baithaks started by classical musician Sukanya Banerjee and her husband, Tejas, at their Vasant Kunj home in Delhi. Held twice a month, the gatherings attract around 50 people each time. “We are creating a setting where birds of a feather flock together. That common experience needs to feel meaningful. It’s why you don’t become friends with the 500 people sitting beside you in a movie hall,” says Sukanya.
In Bengaluru, sisters Shachi Srivastava, a lawyer, and Kriti Srivastava, an educator in design and sustainability, founded Book-A-Table around their shared love of books and food. Each month, they select a book, create a themed food and beverage menu and host ticketed gatherings in their living room. “Reading is inherently solitary, so bringing books and food into a private home creates an instant, offline bond. People, especially Gen Z, are actively seeking analogue, in-person gathering spaces,” says Shachi.
For 28-year-old Rishabh Sonker, who has attended over 50 supper clubs across Delhi and Gurugram in the past year, these gatherings offer an alternative to the repetitive restaurant scene. “Making friends as an adult is hard, but because hosts vet everyone beforehand, you enter a safe environment. In one evening, you’re sitting with lawyers, producers or consultants, sharing stories you’d never hear in a typical restaurant,” he says. The trend extends beyond the metros. In Goa, Monica Sancheti, who spent six years working in the food and beverage industry as a publicist, hosts monthly pasta, wine and cheese evenings in her garden. “I am always talking about restaurants, chefs, ingredients and new openings. Eventually, I thought: why does the answer always have to be another restaurant? So, I brought the table home,” she says. For Sancheti, the appeal lies in a shift towards smaller, more personal gatherings. “People are seeking more meaningful forms of hospitality. You are not simply being sold an experience. You are participating in one,” she observes.
The art of hosting
Beyond offering an alternative to commercial venues, this movement is turning home hospitality into an art of thoughtful curation. From handwritten menus and vintage glassware to carefully planned themes, hosts are paying attention to every detail, prioritising atmosphere, warmth and guest chemistry over elaborate settings. The idea is to create an experience that feels personal, encourages participation and gives strangers a reason to connect.
Take Rocky’s Table, for instance. Liquor entrepreneur Rocky (Rakesh) Mohan, author of The Art of Indian Cuisine and Kohinoor of Rice and Spice, and co-founder of home chef platform Chef Pin, started the initiative to share his passion for Indian food with his social media followers. Created with Puneet Sikand of The Kitchen Art Company and decor collaborator Sanjiv Bali, the supper club hosts 18 diners for a 14-course meal at Mohan’s Delhi residence every alternate Sunday. The menu features regional favourites such as gucchi pulao, Lucknowi shami kebab, prawn malai curry and Amritsari dal, paired with drinks from his brands, including Jamun Gin and Old Monk Coffee. “It is a highly interactive table, where the guests are expected to do at least 30 per cent of the work themselves. For those three hours, it’s all about people having great conversations and laughs,” says Mohan. At The Lost Table, hosted by Archit Agarwal at his Gurgaon residence, the focus is on inventive themes that bring strangers together. Past editions have revolved around ingredients such as lemon, childhood favourites, and the television series The Office, complete with themed dishes, trivia and dress-up. “We recently did a supper club around The Office, so there was Kevin’s Famous Chilli, Schrute Farms beets, Pretzel Day, Office trivia and hidden references around the room,” says Archit.
In Dehradun, Vandita Anand is using her culinary training and creativity to build a supper club culture through Supper at Vandy’s. A Le Cordon Bleu India graduate who previously worked in the insurance sector and interned at The Bombay Canteen, Vandita recently curated a menu celebrating the West Coast of India, drawing flavours from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala. “I want to experiment and build a menu of my own. In the process, I also want to create a community in my city, as there is a dearth of such experiences in Dehradun,” she says.
What connects these ventures is the understanding that hospitality is about much more than what is served on a plate. Whether it is an elaborate regional feast, a playful themed dinner or an experimental culinary journey, each gathering offers guests an opportunity to step outside their everyday social circles. In an increasingly impersonal world, the dining table is reclaiming its place as a space for discovery, conversation and community.
The business of hosting
For all their intimacy, home gatherings require serious operational discipline. Crafting an intimate event, whether it is an acoustic baithak, a themed board game night, or a book swap, requires days of back-end prep, including coordinating artist equipment, managing seating in tight spaces, and sourcing/creating refreshments. Financially, it’s a tightrope as hosts figure out how to charge enough to cover costs—and artiste fees for music baithaks—without making your own home feel like a paid event space.
It was during his training days at Café Zoe that Chef Auroni Mookerjee—now Chef-Partner at Kolkata’s popular barbecue bar Yokocho—began hosting a weekly table for four at his Mumbai residence. “It started with me trying to figure myself out as a chef and to see if I was capable of doing a full service or a tasting menu,” he recalls. For almost seven months, he managed to host a table almost every weekend to a diverse set of diners, who enjoyed the modern Bengali cuisine he served. Along the way, he formed some solid friendships with some of his guests and fellow home chefs. However, the limitations of serving food from home finally got to him, and he folded up the supper club sessions after seven months. “It didn’t seem sustainable—financially or creatively. I also had a job and the regular pressures of day-to-day life. I was just running around shopping for ingredients or crockery half the time. Secondly, I wasn’t feeding enough people. At least, for the ambitions and the ideas I had, I just needed to step up in some way,” he recalls.
Auroni’s experience highlights a crucial reality for anyone looking to open their doors to the public—passion alone cannot sustain a home gathering. Whether you are serving a six-course tasting menu or organising a 20-person poetry reading, the hidden overheads of time, energy, and finances can quickly lead to burnout.
For Archit, making a home supper club financially viable comes down to treating the space like a live media platform. Leveraging a 2,000-person waitlist and strong social media reach, he pairs his curated menus with brand sponsorships. “Inherently, you can’t run more than one or two intimate tables a month without burning out, so distribution is key,” he notes. By partnering with tableware and kitchen appliance brands for physical product integration and digital content, he secures a steady financial cushion. “If we execute two brand-backed tables a month, it generates sustainable revenue. Anything above and beyond that is a bonus,” says Archit, who quit his full-time job last year to put all his efforts into making The Lost Table the success story that it is today. For 29-year-old Suruchi Jain, who started hosting game nights at her residence a few months ago, the venture is still finding its feet financially. Charging `500 per person, she has built a collection of over 50 strategy, party, board and card games for her venture Wild Card Club and recently partnered with a café to expand her offerings. “I want to invest in new board games by the end of the year. A couple of game brands have also approached me for collaborations after seeing my Instagram content. I believe I should be in a more profitable position by next year,” says the Raipur-based Suruchi.
But turning a home into a social venue comes with its own challenges, particularly around security and guest vetting. Unlike commercial establishments, private gatherings rely heavily on trust and clearly defined boundaries. Archit recalls refunding a guest’s payment after receiving what he considered an inappropriate question ahead of a singles mixer. “We have a form that guests are required to fill, but beyond their social media accounts and basic information, such as what they do and where they are from, there isn’t much else we can establish. That said, we haven’t had a single instance of anyone misbehaving with us or another guest,” he says. Safety is equally important for Shachi and Kriti. They have installed cameras at home and in their building and collect detailed information from prospective guests. “We ask for a lot of information on the forms as well,” says Shachi. Kriti, however, takes a more optimistic view: “Maybe this is just putting too much faith in the universe, but I feel readers are nice people who will not harm you.”
Stories that resonate
Unlike commercial restaurants, where food and ambient noise often compete for attention, intimate home gatherings make room for storytelling. The history behind a dish, an artwork, a poem or a personal journey becomes as important as the experience itself. For food historian Dr Mohsina Mukadam, former head of the History Department at Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, this appetite for context is driving the shift towards home dining. “It’s about the stories behind the food—the family lore, the community history of when a dish is cooked, why it’s cooked, and who it is cooked for,” she says. “People want that personal, cultural context which you simply don’t get in a restaurant.”
These gatherings also encourage guests to exchange stories and perspectives. Vandita recalls a dinner where a local Sikh man and his Finnish wife, who run a pizzeria, narrated how they met during an unexpected forest safari encounter. “People love hearing stories, whether it’s the theme behind the menu or personal journeys from others at the table. Here, people are actually talking, sharing perspectives and discovering surprising connections,” she says.
For Auroni, who has stepped back from hosting his own supper club due to operational burnout, the appeal lies in the creative freedom of a private space. “In an institutional space, you have to play by their rules. At home, there is real intentionality. Hosting lets a chef, musician or poet express ideas outside the box, without institutional filters,” he explains.
The intimacy can also translate into lasting friendships. Sukanya says she has formed lifelong bonds through these encounters. “We are living in a world that works along the lines of differences rather than commonalities. These gatherings allow you to look past that and see everybody as people who deserve love, respect and dignity,” she says.
For artists, too, performing in a home offers a different kind of freedom. Hindustani classical vocalist Ronkini Gupta, who has performed at around 40 home baithaks, including Upstairs with Us, believes the informal setting encourages greater experimentation. “You are not merely attending a concert; you are entering a space that feels personal and shared. The music can become quieter, slower, more exploratory. An artiste can take risks that might not emerge as easily on a big stage,” she says. The appeal is not lost on younger audiences either. Twenty-seven-year-old food blogger Aritro Chattopadhyay observes that Gen Z is increasingly looking beyond predictable restaurant experiences. “Our generation loves a bit of unpredictability. We want to break the monotony of standard restaurant menus,” he says. Private dining offers novelty alongside the opportunity to meet new people. “It’s not just about eating; it’s about community-building in a space that feels genuinely warm.”
There is also an unexpected generosity that comes with opening one’s home to strangers. Rocky says he is often touched by the gestures of his guests. “Not a single guest comes to my house without a gift, however small or big,” he says. For him, the real charm lies in the fleeting encounters, too. “To get to know people for the first time, have a conversation and discover what walks of life they have arrived from, knowing you may never meet them again—there’s a strange beauty in that.”
Bringing Baithaks Home
While individual hosts often spearhead their own gatherings, initiatives like Bengaluru-based Nada Bindu are building dedicated ecosystems to help bring intimate baithaks into private homes. Founded by a group of classical music students, including co-founder Chitkala Sharma, the collective bridges the gap for people who want live music in their living rooms but lack direct access to artistes. “It started from a simple desire to listen to music up close, without mics or heavy amplification, the way traditional chamber concerts used to be,” explains Chitkala. Nada Bindu curates monthly, unamplified Carnatic and Hindustani performances across the city, handling all artist coordination and logistics.
The community-funded initiative doesn’t charge hosts; instead, homeowners simply open their doors to 25-35 guests and provide a simple meal like bisi bele bath or curd rice after the performance. “Hosts graciously invite a room full of strangers into their homes. Afterward, artistes, first-time listeners, and families all share dinner. The intimacy of a home space completely strips away the rigid formality of a commercial concert hall,” she shares.