I paid four strangers to have dinner with me

And all I got was this newsletter.

This is Cocktail Charm, a weekly email filled with delicious little things to talk about at parties. In today’s edition: football fashion editors, housewife apologists, and France’s Facebook Marketplace (chic!).

Joana Avillez, Sardine Zine, 2024.

“So he asked me, ‘If we were in a movie right now, what would happen next?’” T said, tipping her frosty glass of grüner forward. “And that’s when I realized this stranger was trying to pull a move on me less than fifteen minutes into our date.” Across the table, C and M were cackling, a Bradshaw-Jones alliance of libertine glee. Around the other end, K had cocked her head, lips pressed in Mirandesque conviction. That left my only available role as the Charlotte. An offensive position to be in: I’m never the Charlotte. The mores of the tennis-bracelet class don’t appeal to me, although I wouldn’t turn down being an upstate rake’s model-slash-muse. But leaning in towards the other four, I actually don’t mind being the Charlotte tonight. I’m having so much fucking fun.

In my early twenties, I used to flick on HBO — or GO, or MAX, or or whatever we’re calling it in these times — and settle into bed with the odd birds of Sex and the City. I was slowly forming a group of friends who would make up my own apertif table of shared escapades and raucous martinis, but I wasn’t quite there yet. So I watched Carrie and company, feeling like I was in the last seat of their booth until I had my own. You’d think my current table was formed over seasons of friendship, with easy affinities and shared histories. But tonight, that’s not the case. We’d all just met in the restaurant.

I was on a social blind date, thanks to a newish app I’d heard of called TimeLeft. Here’s the premise in short: take a personality-lite test, select your location and budget for a Wednesday dinner, and be matched with up to five companions who’ve been picked for compatibility. You’re told to arrive at a restaurant table reserved for you and these strangers; about a half hour after sitting down, the app unlocks icebreakers to keep the conversation moving along. The service, launched in Lisbon, came to the US in March.

I was skeptical just how “compatible” my potential table could be. There were three budgets to pick from, two neighborhoods in Brooklyn to choose between, and we hadn’t gotten to my personality profile yet. How many people could possibly be trying this thing to sustain it?

As it turns out, plenty: by October, roughly 1,000 people were sitting down to a TimeLeft dinner across New York at once. Weekly meetups are now held in 285 cities. And in my restaurant, I was at one of two tables.

We’ve rehashed enough about the loneliness epidemic, how screens send us into social isolation, and the lack of third places left in communities to meet new people. I’ve recapped them myself as someone who’s struggled to expand her social circle. The place where I had discovered TimeLeft made me dubious: it was on Instagram, where I was served a TimeLeft ad that promised the app would help me make friends and feel less lonely.

Would I really trust technology to connect me with people when technology was probably the biggest reason most of us feel so isolated to begin with? It would make good newsletter fodder, at least. The service — the work of matching us up and booking our details for the night — cost $16, which is about the price of a bottle of wine I’d bring to a friend’s party. It sounded reasonable to me.

I tapped to see what was up with this thing, then found myself paging through locations (North Brooklyn or central?), budgets ($, ,$?), biographical info (What’s your age? Nationality? Industry?), and personality questions (Are you guided by logic or emotions? If your life were a fashion statement, would it be classic or trendy? How much do you enjoy exercise? Academic success? Politically incorrect jokes?).

Less than a week later I was at the restaurant, a French place a ten-minute subway ride from home, the hostess pointing me to my table. I’d had a flash fear as I was on the way: would this night be totally strained? Who needs to pay to meet people for dinner, anyway? Weirdos who were too awkward to make friends without app intervention???? Then I was reminded that I was one of the weirdos. Duh.

I was the second arrival at mine, where M was already sitting. She was all smiles as I slid in the chair across from her and introduced myself. “Have you done one of these before?” she asked me in a stage whisper. She hadn’t; as our three other matches joined, it turned out most of us were on our first try. T was the exception. She’d done a handful of dinners not just in New York, but also as a way to meet people during short stints in Chicago and LA. “They’ve all been good but one,” she told us, and even the exception was friendly, if a little too network-y. I relaxed, statistics on our side.

TimeLeft isn’t the only app doing this kind of platonic social organizing; in fact, it feels like we’re in a niche meet-by-app boom. Among the options you can download to meet likeminded people nearby: Hey! Vina (for women), Plura (for the queer community), ATLETO (for athletes), Peanut (for moms). Bumble BFF launched for friend dating in 2016 and expanded in 2023; Meetup started for community event organizing back in 2002. TimeLeft, though, is one of the few that shepherds users right into an IRL experience: plug in your details, and it does the organizing.

Contrary to my skepticism about how well-matched we could be, once we’d arrived, I was pretty impressed by our group: we were all women, coincidentally, but also within a roughly two-year age range. T worked in media, like me, though she was in television; among us K was a policy researcher, M a product developer, C an HR officer. We talked about how long we’d been in Brooklyn and what we did when we weren’t blind-dining. When icebreaker questions opened, we followed them loosely, but soon devolved into side stories, gossips, questions we wanted to ask rather than were told to. We clinked cocktails. We laughed over confit and frites. Two hours flew; we declined dessert, but exchanged phone numbers and started a group chat. I invited them to the brunch I was throwing in a week; two piped up that they might make it. For the price of a Lambrusco bottle, I was fizzing happily when we called it a night.

A question for you: have you said yes to a blind social arrangement? Or will you now? Hit reply and let me know.

Tell me about it

Conversation-starters to take to happy hour, your group chat, or your own app dinner.

How did the NFL put a fashion editor on its payroll? This is the Super Bowl content I crave. Kyle Smith is 31, started his career dressing sports anchors, and is now in charge of bringing NFL players to menswear shows and tunnel-walk fittings.

Marquez Valdes-Scantling, a wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints who has played in the N.F.L. since 2018, said opportunities to showcase personal style were appealing to athletes like himself, who are on teams with as many as 53 players and seen mostly in uniforms that include helmets over their faces.

“We’re so interchangeable,” he said. “You get lost.”

Who’s adding some smakfullhet to their sitting rooms? Designers everywhere are getting into Swedish antiques, and the Architectural Digest team is on it.

Is this how to raise a girlboss? In other Scandi news, researchers analyzed the professional outcomes of more than 750,000 Danish teens — and found that simply exposing girls to entrepreneurship makes them more likely to start their own businesses in adulthood.

Could breakup content make for a happy marriage? In South Korea, everyone’s watching divorce TV — just as the country’s counting fewer matrimonial splits.

Or will a fake reality show discourage real tourism? Sick of spring breakers, the city of Miami Beach produced a pretend trailer that says coming to town to party is actually no fun at all.

DEPARTMENT OF INTERLUDES

I’d like to congratulate Sherwood News on making me laugh through my grocery bill misery with this headline on the US egg shortage.

One thing I couldn’t stop talking about at trivia on Tuesday

Sorry, but I have just learned that trophy-shaped planters are called garden urns.

One dish I tried on guests this weekend

Letter of recommendation: It’s the world’s simplest strawberry spoon cake.

One question I’m asking anyone I meet this week

How far behind are you on your reading goal this year? The last thing I need is another social network, but I just got put on to StoryGraph and it turns out I might actually make it to 50 books this year. Add me!

Backtalk

Recall the Baz Luhrmann bar mentioned in last week’s email? There’s a great Q&A with Catherine Martin — Baz’s production designer, bar co-owner, and also wife — in Curbed about the design that went into the space. Click for good tidbits about brass monkeys, an erotic sculpture foundry, and the French Facebook Marketplace.

Last chatter

Listen, I’m an unabashed Lisa Barlow apologist; I type this as RHOSLC plays in front of me and I contemplate the time she told us all that she’s very important to God. She is lethally hilarious in a way that we common laypeople can only aspire to. That’s from God! Anyway, I simply cannot get over this editorial pap walk she did for SSENSE. This woman drives her Porsche SUV herself, unlike some Utah housewives, and she WILL make sure her driver door doesn’t let you forget it. Baby Gorgeous, you’re a woman of the people!

Clink clink!
Gabriela

Thanks for being a reader of Cocktail Charm! Has this newsletter helped you out at happy hour? Let me know; I’d love to hear it.