Food for thought at the 'anti-Twitter' dinner date for 200
There is a menu, starting with hors d'oeuvres, moving through fish and meat and concluding with dessert. But this is all about food for thought, rather than food to eat, where the only thing being chewed over are ideas.
The Feast of Strangers is organised by philosopher Theodore Zeldin, as an antidote to the superficial conversations of Facebook and Twitter and to encourage people to open up to each other in more meaningful ways.
Up to 200 people will be paired with random strangers to sit down and talk for up to the full three hours of the event, which takes place at the View Tube, the viewing platform for the Olympic Park in Stratford, on Saturday.
They will have before them a menu which contains the conventional restaurant headings, but under which are a series of questions, relating not to whether your steak is T-bone or fillet, but the big issues of life: love, death, fear etc.
Mr Zeldin, a historian and philosopher who advises French president Nicolas Sarkozy, said the 25 question topics — the precise details of which he was reluctant to reveal in advance — were designed as stimuli for a conversation between the participants.
He said: "People in this world of superficial communication find themselves isolated and lonely and have difficult in talking about personal things that really matter to them."
He described his event as "the very opposite of speed dating". He said that it was up to individuals whether they wanted to talk about just one subject during the three hours, or work their way through the entire menu.
Mr Zeldin, who runs similar "ice-breaking" gatherings for politicians, institutions, industry and events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, said he rarely found people giving up before the end.
"I did one event recently where they started at 7pm and some people were still going at two the following morning." And while there is no actual food on the menu, physical sustenance can be found at the View Tube's cafe.
The dinner is part of a series of free events focusing on cultural subjects in the London 2012 host boroughs until July 17.
For more information and to book go to createlondon.co.uk
