Travelers and neighbors make connections over home-cooked meals

Sometimes when Aurora resident Lourdes Soto-Smith is tired from a day of working in Chicago, she'd like to share a home-cooked dinner with friends before making the trip home.

Soto-Smith has found gracious hosts and enjoyable dining companions through the website www.mealsharing.com, started by Naperville native Jay Savsani about two years ago as a way of building community, deepening cultural exchanges and encouraging healthier eating through the sharing of home-cooked meals.

“I've been a guest many times, and the hosting I've done twice,” said Soto-Smith, the married mother of three children. “I'm really thrilled about the whole experience.”

Soto-Smith has had an opportunity to try different cuisines and always finds the dinner conversation stimulating.

“There's a lot of conversation going on, especially about food,” she said. “Many have traveled a lot. I have traveled a lot and lived in different countries, so we have that common ground. I just love the diversity of meal sharing.”

That's exactly what Savsani had in mind when the 30-year-old graduate of Naperville North High School started his website as another facet in the growing sharing economy. Savsani himself got the idea for meal sharing when he was traveling in Cambodia. Tired of playing tourist, he wondered where the locals ate, then the thought struck him: “They're eating in their homes. That was a big aha moment,” he said.

Savsani asked his hotel clerk if he could find a family to host him for a home-cooked meal. He admits the request might seem a bit forward, but he said that soon there were people arguing about who would take him home.

An hour later, he found himself sharing dinner with Mr. Pon, Mr. Pon's wife and two kids, and a friend.

Savsani remembers the meal included rice, fish and a pork dish, all very fresh, but what he recalls most is the experience of all of them eagerly talking with one another.

“The meal really resonated with me,” he said. “I was able to turn the spontaneity of that Cambodian meal into a website.”

Hosts worldwide

Dubbed the “Airbnb of Home-Cooked Meals,” referring to the website that allows people to open their homes to traveling visitors, MealSharing has grown far beyond its Chicago base.

“We have hosts in 450 cities worldwide,” Savsani said.

The most popular cities for meal-sharing experiences include Chicago, Berlin, New York City, Madrid and Sao Pãulo in Brazil, according to the MealSharing website. Travelers can post their interest in sharing a meal in a location they're visiting and local residents can register to be hosts. Hosts can post a date for a meal, or leave the date open to request.

Savsani said many of the people who sign up are travelers who enjoy getting off the beaten path, but ordinary people share meals, too. Many MealSharing participants in Chicago and the suburbs are neighbors meeting neighbors, he said.

“It's not necessarily the geographic distance traveled, but the cultural distance traveled,” he said.

Many MealSharing participants such as Soto-Smith sign on to be both hosts and guests, but one is not required to host a meal to be a guest. There's no cost for registering with MealSharing, but some hosts ask for a chip-in fee from their guests. A person does not need to be a gourmet cook to host a meal, Savsani said

“Make whatever you make, whatever you are comfortable making,” he said. “You don't have to do a five-star meal.”

Savsani, who is of Indian descent, said he prepares Indian food when he hosts a meal about every two weeks. Soto-Smith said she draws on her Mexican background when she hosts, but tries to prepare dishes that the guests would not find in a restaurant.

“They (the guests) seem to expect Mexican style,” she said. “I always try to cook something unusual.”

One of Soto-Smith's own favorite host families is a German lady with a Romanian husband.

“They are such a warm couple,” she said. “The food is phenomenal.”

Soto-Smith enjoys the German woman's cooking so much that she and her family were guests at a Mother's Day meal the lady served last year. Normally her husband and kids would have taken her out to eat in a restaurant, she said.

“I couldn't think of a better place to go,” Soto-Smith said. “The food was amazing and she even had little gifts for the moms. It was one of the best Mother's Days I've had.”

Soto-Smith said she's also been the guest at much more casual meals, served on disposable plates. She attends some meals by herself and others with her family.

“We don't have family (in the area),“ she said. “We really like being in that family setting.”

Aurora resident Bonniejean Alford Hinde registered with MealSharing.com a year and a half ago, and hosted her first meal on Thanksgiving. A former vegetarian, Hinde served the traditional turkey dinner.

“I had five people I never met before sitting at my table. Two had never been to a Thanksgiving meal ever,” she said.

Hinde said three of the guests have become Facebook friends. She looks forward to being a guest and to hosting another meal this spring.

“I can't wait to have the next one,” she said.

Building community

A sociology teacher, Hinde said she sees websites like MealSharing as a way to restore a lost sense of community and let people connect without being overly personal.

“It gives people an opportunity to meet new people and I love that,” she said.

Hinde said she was not overly concerned about safety when she registered with MealSharing, but the site has safety measures in place. When one of her Thanksgiving guests expressed concern about putting her credit card information on the site, she notified MealSharing, which updated the site to better ensure safety the next day.

Guests and hosts fill out profiles, and a host can refuse any guest without questions asked. Participants write reviews of their experiences.

Savsani, who says he devotes full-time to MealSharing, said the comments he receives from participants make him want to continue doing it.

“What keeps me going is, I probably get an email from someone around the world once a day,” he said.