Every Sunday, for as long as I can remember, my grandfather prepared a huge pot of pasta sauce and assembled the family. I missed that tradition terribly when I moved away. As if to compensate, I found myself compulsively gathering friends and strangers around makeshift tables. In India, plates were set over a discarded door while sauce simmered on a camp stove. In Costa Rica, card tables formed our banquet while my friends and I tried out the newest recipe taught by the Frenchman who lived up the hill. Those moments have come to define my life.

In early 2020, just before the onset of COVID-19, my younger brother unexpectedly died. That loss cracked me open, left me with a profound hunger to live more intentionally and pursue wonder and connection with every breath. While I had long planned to begin a PhD program in 2021, the plan to open Wonder Table to the public was a last minute decision born from the profound disconnection we were all suffering in the wake of the pandemic. The same week I began my studies, I held my first ticketed dinner.