Name: Conversation Dinners
Start: 2025-10-20T20:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-10-20T22:00:00+01:00
Location: Slizza Pizza & Pub

Imagine having dinner with a stranger. But instead of food, your menu for dinner is made up of stimulating, thought-provoking topics to discuss with each course — a conversation dinner as it were.
Based upon the ideas and work of Theodore Zeldin, historian, philosopher, and conversationalist, the event is designed for participants to create connections and fully engage themselves in a respectful, meaningful conversation, to understand another person in a new way. You may not know your partner for the evening at all and you may never meet them again, but for one evening, you hopefully make a connection and get to know them in a deeper way than small talk allows. You may also find you get to know yourself a little better too as you open up on things you may rarely even do with those you know.
Structure
A Conversation Dinner seats two strangers together, who have never met or know each other only a little, for an interesting conversation that goes beyond small talk.
A Conversation Menu is given to each diner. The menu looks like a restaurant menu, with starters, salads, Entrees and Dessert, but each heading contains topics to talk about instead of descriptions of food dishes.
The host then introduces the event and explains how to proceed, with the first person choosing a topic from the first course, and when you have finished discussing it, the other picks an item, and so you go through the Menu.
The pairs remain together throughout the whole menu as the objective is to build the connection as the event proceeds and to get to know each other well.
The conversation typically takes about two hours, but it can last much longer.
To some extent, the value and the enjoyment of a conversation dinner is a function of the personalities of the two people matched. If you are lucky, it can be a marvellous experience; not so fortunate, and it can be much less so. Though you may find you can learn much more from a poor experience than from a good one if you choose to.
Questions
The Menu will be revealed on the evening of the event, however the sort of questions and topics raised are aimed at soliciting meaningful conversations. Examples to give you an idea, therefore, are:
• How have your priorities changed over the years?
• What do you think about your spending habits, and what do you need that money cannot buy?
• What would you like to be engraved on your tombstone?
• How have you made and lost friendships and what other kinds of friends would you like?
And just remember, a conversation is a two way street. Engage with each other, ask each others thoughts on the topic, and to create depth and understanding to your connection, don’t forget to ask “why” your partner has responded in the way they do
Have fun, enjoy and hopefully get to know people well.