Latina Foodies Share Their Culinary & Social Skills With 'Airbnb for Hungry People'
Are you hungry for a Latin home-cooked meal and some great conversation? Well, if you happen to be visiting New York City, you're in luck!
There's a new food trend that's taking off in the Big Apple as well as other cities that lets food enthusiasts -- or just regular people with appetites -- enjoy a meal entirely prepared by a perfect stranger in the comfort of their home, NPR's The Salt reports.
You could call it a modern-day supper club for foodies who want to share their culinary - and social skills with others.
Dubbed as an "Airbnb for hungry people," the new trend has gotten a boost from websites such as Eat With, Side Tour, VoulezVousDiner and Feastly.
Besides having a happy palate, there's much more to gain through these foodie websites. Besides a full tummy, you may also leave with a new set of friends.
"It's easy to think these sites are all about the food, but they're not. The food is often just an excuse for what can essentially be a really great party with a bunch of people you've never met," The Salt points out.
Latina foodies Glori Linares and Victoria Delgado held a dinner party in their apartment in Brooklyn through the site Eat With to share their genuine Latin cuisine with complete strangers.
Each diner of the "taco party" paid $40 to go to the home of these "two fun-loving Latinas."
"They have a great apartment, filled with art, just across from the Brooklyn Museum. As soon as their guests arrived, they made it a point to shove rum drinks into our hands," said reporter Arun Venugopal.
Eat With, along with hosts Linares and Delgado, even drew German tourists to their table.
After seeing a segment on Eat With on German TV called "How to Survive in New York," German tourist Katrin Bergmann -- along with several others, came all the way from Frankfurt, Germany to get a genuine culinary and true-American experience.
"We thought we wanted to do something different from a normal tourist tour, and we wanted to talk to real people who live here," Bergmann said. "And so we have real Brooklyn people around us ... and Germans."
Hosts Linares and Delgado "kept shuttling between the dining room and kitchen, frying up empanadillas stuffed with Oaxaca cheese. They're both vivacious and easygoing -- perfectly suited to the job of hosting a bunch of strangers and dealing with 'unforeseen circumstances,' like an episode last summer when a guest fainted after a little too much rum on a hot day."
There are many great lessons learned a lot the way for aspiring foodies and the websites provide a great platform to eat amazing, home-cooked food from around the world while meeting fascinating people who are sure to have stories that come along with their receipes. A nice touch that you won't get sitting at a restaurant!