Toronto offers a multitude of dining experiences, from Michelin-starred restaurants and historic diners to food trucks, pop-ups and private catering. If you’re a foodie, you likely already know the latest hot spots. However, one option you might overlook is a supper club, often held in someone’s personal home. Social dining events have been a staple in Toronto for years, and new supper clubs are popping up all the time. That’s why we went on the hunt for lesser-known supper clubs happening right now. Each one aims to build community and connect Torontonians through a shared love of food.
No matter who you’re hoping to meet—whether it’s sapphic and genderqueer folks making their own pasta or post-grads breaking bread to make friends outside of university—there’s a supper club for everyone. Check out these two below.
Bon Vivant
Gabrièle Lagacé and Lauren Chin started hosting private supper clubs under the name Bon Vivant in September of 2024, as a way to build community after graduating from post-secondary programs. “Outside of University, it’s tough to get into different friend groups outside of co-workers, and to meet people organically rather than online,” says Lagacé.
Her family has always placed emphasis on food, making it a core feature of gatherings and travel plans. “We’ll spend hours curating menus for dinners,” she says, noting that Chin grew up with a similar practice.
When they contemplated how to build community in Toronto, they both felt that gathering people around a dinner table was the best way to make sincere connections. “That’s where we have our most meaningful memories and deepest conversations,” she says.
After proofing the concept via private supper clubs, they began opening them to the public and hosting once a month. They acquired food handling certificates, and began sourcing food from local markets to cook the meals themselves. Each menu is inspired by seasonal ingredients and finalized on the day of, but guests can always expect to start with warm sourdough and whipped honey butter, followed by an appetizer course, a main, and dessert.
Tickets always sell out, and they have a wait list to accommodate additional interest so those who are eager can be first to purchase tickets for future events. The crowd usually spans guests in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.
They also continue to accept bookings for private supper clubs, in which they’ll collaborate with the client to create a menu inspired by their vision.
Going forward, Lagacé will take over the series full-time as she evolves the model into a full-time role, while Chin pursues her own career. She intends to partner with private chefs moving forward and introduce them in a highlight series, so she encourages anyone interested to reach out.
On April 26, she’ll be hosting a collaborative dinner party with Toronto artist Jade Buckley. The immersive experience will include a five-course fine dining menu by local chefs Jordan Mooken and David Matus, while Buckley showcases a new (and never seen before) art collection that guests can purchase work from. Tickets will be on sale in early April.
Eat Out
Sara Barongoodman just started a supper club for queer and gender queer people in Toronto, after starting the event series in Rome, Italy.
She had been studying and living in Italy for the last three and a half years–having pursued a master’s degree in gastronomy. There, she focused her research on the concept of queer food, interviewed chefs, and contemplated how identity translates into culinary practices. “For me, I always feel more so than being Jewish or Canadian, that the food that I cook feels inherently queer. So I thought that other people must feel like this, and what does that mean?” she says.
As NBC reported last year, the term “queer food” has become increasingly popular, though its exact definition is debated. Some identify it simply as food made by queer people, while others say it’s about sharing food in queer communities, or serving marginalized people who have traditionally been excluded from fine dining spaces.
For Barongoodman, it’s about nourishing community, both literally and figuratively. It’s also “creative, often with kitschy, colourful, whimsical, or nostalgic aesthetic, and experimental, intuitive modes of cooking,” she explains. Ultimately, “It’s messy, sexy, and prioritises pleasure and joy.” After she submitted her research, she moved from Piedmont to Rome and began working in restaurants there. Then after experiencing a breakup, she realized that she no longer had an attachment to queer community within the city, and didn’t know how to find it. Naturally, she hosted a queer supper club.
“I just kept thinking back to the research that I had done. I’ve always loved entertaining and throwing dinner parties and that was something that I really missed,” she says. So she made friends with a regular customer at the restaurant she was working at, and they agreed to execute a supper club together, organizing it in only three weeks. They hosted 15 people in Barongoodman’s tiny, Roman kitchen which had no dishwasher. “But it was so much fun,” she says, “It was so beautiful to see so many people that I never would have met otherwise, but who all were looking for the same thing that I was looking for.”
From there, she tried to host one every other month, while dabbling with pop-ups and private catering. Then in February she moved to Toronto and brought the format with her, hosting “Eat Out” supper club in the apartment she lives in with her sister and sister’s partner. “They both love to cook and host, so they’ve been very excited about helping me out with it and letting me use our communal space. We have a big giant table that sits 10,” she says.
Upcoming events are announced on Instagram, and Barongoodman recently launched a mailing list for those who want to be kept in the loop.
Since she grew up in Montreal eating foods from all kinds of different cultures, the menu is loose and experimental. She also incorporates certain learnings from her time in Italy–like respecting the seasons and the terroir, utilizing local ingredients, and making things by hand–while doing away with other insights she gleaned there like sticking to tradition, simply for tradition’s sake.
She prefers to explore food identity beyond its geographical and historical limitations, citing Tuscan bread as an example, which is never made with salt (a tradition that traces back to high salt taxes in the Middle Ages). “I just want to cook, so why can’t I add something to a recipe if I think it’s going to taste better,” she laughs. Going forward, she’s excited to get “weirder” with the supper club menus, something she thinks will be well received in Toronto.
