This sort-of-secret dinner series celebrates Toronto’s queer and sapphic communities

The sort-of secret: Eat Out Supper Club, a roving queer dinner series where strangers gather around sensual maximalist meals You may have heard of it if: You’re part of Toronto’s queer or sapphic communities But you probably haven’t tried it because: It pops up in different places, including private homes, farms and bars. Plus, the guest list is usually limited

Sara Baron Goodman, an Italian-trained chef by way of Montreal, launched the Eat Out Supper Club in Toronto one year ago, on International Women’s Day, from her home. For her inaugural event, she hosted an intimate dinner for 15 strangers and served beetroot ravioli roses stuffed with french onion soup and coated in dark chocolate brown butter, potato ice cream with chips and caviar, and tire d’érable on lavender shaved ice.

Since then, the supper club has grown into a series that offers a unique community space for queer women in Toronto.

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Before she was orchestrating dinner parties, Baron Goodman studied journalism and slogged away at copywriting jobs she hated. She was 25 years old when, in a bold move, she decided to drop everything and move to Italy to study gastronomy.

While working toward her culinary master’s thesis, she began exploring the concept of “queer food.” “Queerness could be an identity marker in food,” says Baron Goodman, in the same way as ethnicity or regionality. Sometimes that idea shows up in a dish’s presentation, as in her staple radicchio salad, chosen partly for the leaf’s deep purple hue. Baron Goodman fans it out on a plate to make it look like a flower or—depending on your imagination, she says with a wink—something a little naughtier.

But, for Baron Goodman, queer food goes beyond aesthetics. It’s about the entire system—from the sustainable sourcing of ingredients to the ethical treatment of workers. “Food is so deeply personal and political,” she says. “You can learn a lot about someone by what they eat.” Baron Goodman often sources ingredients from local producers like Mount Wolfe Farm in Caledon, a women-run operation focused on sustainable agriculture. For one spring-themed dinner last April, Baron Goodman even foraged some of the ingredients herself, picking wild garlic and herbs in High Park.

On a personal level, she describes food as a sensual, deeply embodied experience. “I’ll stick my whole hand into something, and it’s very tactile and sensory,” Baron Goodman says. When cooking, she enters a flow state. “I think in a lot of ways that relates to my experience of queerness—of leaning into sensuality and leaning out of codes and norms and propriety.”

While the club’s concept may be new to Toronto, the first edition took place about two years earlier in Rome. After finishing her gastronomy degree, Baron Goodman moved to the city with her partner at the time. The relationship ended soon after the move, leaving her, as Goodman puts it, to “have a breakdown, more or less.” She was alone in a new city without a clear way of accessing queer community.

A close friend encouraged her to start hosting dinners. So the first Eat Out Supper Club took place on the rooftop of Goodman’s apartment in Rome, complete with a table built out of crates from the market. She ran the series there for just over a year before eventually bringing the idea home with her to Toronto.

During the dinners, Baron Goodman spends most of the night hovering at the edges of the room, plating and listening. “I love eavesdropping,” she says. “You hear people talking about identity and gender and music and life—it always feels really wholesome.” Most gatherings are capped at 15 people—small enough that conversations flow easily but big enough that everyone leaves having met someone new.

But sometimes the guest list is much longer. Her latest event—a full year after that first Toronto dinner—was hosted at Three Dollar Bill in Parkdale. It was her biggest gathering yet, with about 70 guests circulating through the bar for a buffet-style dinner tied to the launch of Queers at the Table, an anthology of recipes and essays exploring the relationship between queerness and cooking. (Baron Goodman had quoted one of the book’s editors in her master’s thesis.)

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For the March event, the vibe was less dinner party, more salon, with guests drifting between tables and talking to the authors, the chef and one another. The spread included snacks designed for grazing and mingling rather than a sit-down service: large rustic loaves of bread piled on wooden boards; small gold goblets filled with pickles and jewel-toned dips; an avocado, cilantro and cashew pizza; and a massive grilled mushroom for guests to cut into. In the corner, a mannequin torso in a glossy red leather dress watched over the feast.

Despite the growing crowds, Baron Goodman still treats the project as something intimate. Tickets spread mostly through Instagram and word of mouth, and the next event will likely return to the smaller communal-table format.

Maiesha Zarin, who has attended two of Baron Goodman’s dinners, describes the atmosphere as magical and says, “It’s like eating art.” Zarin still keeps up with people they’ve met around the table. In Rome, some guests even met partners at Goodman’s dinners. So, for Toronto sapphics, it’s only a matter of time.

The next Eat Out Supper Club will take place in late April and will be a collaboration with artist and researcher Pallavi Thampi and will focus on platonic connections—think a candlelight dinner but for friends.