Salon Night
One table, one big question, phones in a bowl by the door. The host poses a single real question — about work, money, mortality, ambition — and the whole table stays on it, together, for as long as it holds. A dinner party’s rarest good is sustained shared attention; this format protects it on purpose.
What it's for
Recreate the thing modern life rarely permits: one sustained conversation that the whole table attends to.
The guest's job
Come ready to think out loud and stay on one thread instead of splintering into side-chats.
The vote
Pick next month’s question by show of hands before dessert.
The reveal
The phones come out of the bowl — and nobody reaches for them until then.
Food & drink spine
Courses that don’t pull the host into the kitchen; presence is the dish.
Conversation fuel
"What have you changed your mind about lately?" or "What are you actually optimizing for right now?"
How it flops — steer around it
Too big. Past six or seven, one table fractures into three and the thread snaps.