Why strangers are swapping secrets at this underground L.A. supper club

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Set us as preferred A few weeks after the anniversary of her mother’s death, Ronni Minnis received an email invitation to Sweet Antelope, a storytelling-themed supper club.The evening’s theme was grief, a subject that felt especially poignant to Minnis as she continued to mourn her mother.

After a meditation in an attic, she sat down to an elaborate candlelit dinner and shared stories of her grief with strangers.“It was extraordinary,” she says.The experience left Minnis eager to return.

Tonight, she’s back, this time with her husband, Michael Minnis, whose birthday she’s celebrating in an unusual way.She surprised him by bringing him to the supper club.

“Surprise! You’re spending your birthday with strangers,” she jokes at the dinner table, where pink dahlias cut from the home garden fill the table.Tonight’s theme is “goodbye,” setting the stage for conversations that veer into the provocative and sentimental, moving beyond pleasantries and small talk.Kristina Robbins created Sweet Antelope in 2023, hosting the storytelling-based supper club in her West Adams home.Each month, she invites mostly strangers to share personal stories over four-course meals prepared with ingredients from her garden and local farms.

“All the herbs from last night were from my garden.All the flowers were from my garden,” she says.

Books In an era of ‘anti-intellectualism,’ a popular L.A.reading series called Grain of Salt is redefining the book club by pairing queer literature with immersive four-course meals.Robbins has always loved throwing parties.

When her children moved out, she began wondering where to direct her energy.Sweet Antelope became an outlet for her passion for hosting and an expression of her belief that people need deeper connections with one another through storytelling.

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