At The Community Table, diners sit down as strangers but leave with new friends

At a recent dinner party, I raised a glass to say “happy birthday” to a new friend across the table. We’d be celebrating with six others over a four-course meal with cocktails, wine and three hours of endless conversation.

But I didn’t know the birthday girl until earlier that night. Most of us around the table had never met before. That table of strangers — now fully versed in one another’s upcoming vacations, wedding plans and home renovations — came together that night because of Jake and Becca Timms, a couple who’ve created an intimate, communal dining experience called The Community Table, aimed at bringing strangers together around good food and warm hospitality.

The couple hosts two multi-course dinners each month at rotating locations across Milwaukee. They most closely work with a handful of Airbnbs, which offer space to the Timmses at a discount and are noteworthy for their location, amenities and unique decor. Among them is a historic mansion on Milwaukee's east side, a Walker's Point home built in 1900, and a kooky maximalist’s dream house filled with taxidermy, vintage furniture, rooms in a rainbow of colors and a parlor area draped in red velvet curtains like it was lifted from the set of “Twin Peaks.”

They announce the month’s location and menu on The Community Table Instagram; tickets open to the first eight to 12 people who reserve a seat. The dinners include a cocktail and wine, plus a four-course meal made by Jake. And, of course, an opportunity to mingle with people they’d otherwise never meet.

It starts with a welcome cocktail, poured by Becca who, in full hostess mode, makes every guest feel at home, shaking off any initial awkwardness you might feel walking into a room of strangers. She has a playlist of boppy tunes as the night’s score, and she waits till all the guests arrive before offering a tour of the space, chatting about the history of the building and the neighborhood. Jake, meanwhile, preps dinner in the kitchen.

Menus change with the seasons, and the Timmses work with local growers, butchers and businesses to incorporate locally made products wherever they can, like mushrooms from Mushroom Mike, cocktails from Great Lakes Distillery and hot honey from MJD Apiary, an urban bee farm in Milwaukee.

Courses — such as individual charcuterie plates; salads with roasted squash, crispy shallot and pistachios; deviled eggs with trout roe; steak frites with bearnaise sauce; wild mushroom risotto with braised short rib; and bourbon pecan pie — come to the table with leisurely spacing, leaving plenty of time to chat between each.

And there is plenty of chatting — about more than just the food. You might sit down not knowing a thing about the person to your left or right, but by the time you get up from the table, you’ve made connections and conversation you never would have with the folks seated next to you at the restaurant down the street.

Communal dining makes friends of strangers

That’s the heart of The Community Table, inspired by communal dining experiences Jake had on travels across the country.

“When I was visiting some larger cities, I saw restaurants where there was a big table that was like an extension of the bar where, if you didn't mind sitting with strangers, you could take a seat and talk with people as you enjoyed your meal,” Jake said. “It was just cool to see everybody sharing together, making it not feel strange to be dining alone. I really took that to heart.”

As Jake brainstormed ideas for ways to showcase his cooking talents, he circled back to those communal dinners. He wanted to create that experience in more intimate settings at home.

“It’s like a dinner party with friends you don't know yet,” he said. “And at the end, we’ve seen perfect strangers exchanging phone numbers to keep in touch.”

The Timmses are admittedly a little shocked by how quickly the dinner guests connect.

“Every time we get our guests seated, I worry there will be an awkward silence, but it never happens,” Becca said. “Everyone just naturally starts chit-chatting like they’ve known each other forever. It’s the best feeling. It’s exactly what we wanted from the start.”

An experiment becomes an experience

But that first dinner wasn’t exactly an easy sell.

Jake isn’t a known name in the Milwaukee culinary scene, but he’s passionate about cooking, something he fell into by accident while attending college in Illinois.

“To help pay off my schooling, I applied for a job at a four-diamond hotel in town, but when I was brought in by the hotel’s head chef, I realized I’d applied for the wrong job," he said.

That accidental interview was for the position of a line cook, but Jake had never worked in a proper restaurant. “The only experience I had in food and beverage was flipping burgers at a water park in my hometown,” he said.

But he impressed the chef, who gave Jake two weeks to prove himself. Jake stayed in the kitchen for five years.

He earned his degree, and the cooking bug stuck with him. After he moved to Milwaukee and fell in love with its restaurants, he started brainstorming ways to get his name out there in culinary circles. A full-time medical laboratory scientist, his cooking venture would need to be a side gig, something he could develop in his spare time.

The Community Table concept was already fully developed in his mind, but he didn’t have an audience, and no one had tried Jake’s food yet. So the Timmses decided to do a test run with five different couples they knew, none of whom knew each other.

They reached out to local Airbnbs to gauge interest in hosting a trial dinner and ended up booking one on Jefferson Street in downtown Milwaukee.

Jake served beef Wellington with maple butter parsnip puree paired with butternut squash soup. Becca, a project manager at a human resources tech company, worked her interpersonal skills as she hosted, mingled and watched the group of strangers chat across the table like old friends.

“It was three hours of laughter and conversation,” Jake said. “We kept looking at each other, saying, ‘This could go somewhere.’”

That led Jake to invite a group of local foodie social media influencers to their next dinner.

“I said, ‘Dinner’s on me. If you enjoy it, post about it, but if you don’t, no problem,’” Jake said.

By the next morning, The Community Table Instagram account had gained almost 1,000 followers.

That was in December 2022. A little over a year later, The Community Table has regularly sold out of monthly dinners, partnered with nearly a dozen local businesses, and has created connections with people from all walks of life across the city. Its 18th dinner will be held in April.

“Every month is completely new,” Becca said. “It’s a different space, a different menu and a different group of people — you'll never have the same experience twice.”

Jake and Becca said they’ve had repeat diners who come by themselves to meet new people and couples who’ve made The Community Table a monthly date-night destination. They’ve watched guests swap contact info and others who make plans to keep the fun going after dinner wrapped up.

“We had a group of people, ages 23 to 63, who had the best time together and didn’t want the night to end,” Jake said. “So they looked around and said, ‘Where should we go next?’ And they all went out together for a nightcap.”

The Timmses love bringing together strangers, but they’ve also expanded their business to offer private dinners, auctioning off the one-of-a-kind experiences in local raffles and creating dining experiences for birthday celebrations and bachelorette parties.

“People are looking to do dinner a little differently,” Becca said. “Maybe instead of going out to dinner, they want a more low-key experience, maybe they want to stay in but still have a restaurant-quality meal. We love giving people these experiences.”

The Community Table continues to grow

As The Community Table expands, its offerings will, too. The Timmses said they’re looking beyond dinner to plan intimate brunch experiences, more casual cocktail-and-appetizer mixers, farm dinners and easygoing singles events.

“We don’t want to stay too static,” Becca said. “We want to change things up so everyone can experience what The Community Table is about.”

They want to show off more of the city, too, including dinners set in historical buildings and local landmarks, like the March 27 dinner held at the historic Beulah Brinton House in Bay View.

How to dine at The Community Table

Dates for the next dinner in April will be confirmed in the coming weeks. Follow The Community Table on Instagram to be the first to learn about next month's dates, menu and location.

When tickets are released, they are $120 per person and can be purchased online at thecommunitytable.com.

Rachel Bernhard joined the Journal Sentinel as dining critic in June 2023. She’s been busy exploring the Milwaukee area food scene to share her favorite finds with readers along the way. Like all Journal Sentinel reporters, she buys all meals, accepts no gifts and is independent of all establishments she covers.

What should she cover next? Contact her at rseis@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @rachelbernhard or on Instagram at @rach.eats.mke.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Community Table is an intimate, communal dining experience in Milwaukee