A Seat at the Table: How Dine With Dez is Redefining the Dining Experience
Desmond Sam and Ramses Rubio discuss the value of conversation at the dinner table.
Photography by Desmond Sam
We all want a seat at the table. That seat in question is at Dine With Dez. Kicked off at the 2023 Miami Art Basel in partnership with Gitano Casa Faena and Patron Tequila, publicist and producer Desmond Sam was searching for more meaningful conversations at the dinner table. In collaboration with creative and partnership director Ramses Rubio, Dine With Dez was created for artists of all mediums to come together, make connections, and leave with a newfound sense of hospitality, community, and an exceptional dining experience.
Now expanded across Miami, New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, Dine With Dez intends for guests to interact through the art of thought-provoking, deep dialogue. While many guests barely know each other, Dine With Dez sparks vulnerability and intimacy, leaving guests as anything but strangers by the end of each dinner. Questions include “Do you have a hard time saying ‘no,’ and why?” and “If you could have a weed session with any historical or pop culture figure, who would it be and why?” While they ponder questions they’ve never thought about before, guests can’t help but talk with their mouths full as the multi-course meals continue to make their way to the table.
Dine With Dez’s most recent dinner highlighted Hispanic Heritage Month. For their fifth installment, they partnered with SUYO Pisco and Bar Calico to network with those in the Hispanic creative industry. Here, they relished traditional dishes, like Causa de Camarón, Achiote Chicken, and Baby Eggplant Mole paired with artisanal Peruvian pisco cocktails. At another recent dinner, they collaborated with HYDRO to provide cannabis-infused meals with a meticulously crafted Michelin-style seven-course menu inspired by Northern China. This region is known to be one of the first to discover and cultivate the hemp plant.
Sam and Rubio are on a mission to make Dine With Dez an international dining experience through a private yet inclusive membership dinner club. Amongst continuous partnerships with Galore Magazine, Gushcloud, Patron, Prima Pave, and The Walker Hotel, Dine With Dez follows its goal to collaborate with all types of businesses, creatives, and industry leaders. They spoke with 1202 MAGAZINE to discuss Dine With Dez’s dedication to sparking conversation amongst creatives, how they continue to expand, the value of conversation to them, and what’s next for the dinner series.
What is Dine With Dez, and what is its mission to redefine dining and networking?
Ramses Rubio: At the beginning of this journey, Desmond felt dissatisfied with how he was connecting with others post-pandemic. We had learned so much about ourselves during that time. Anxiety, fear, and depression were new lovers we never gave consent to but took over us nonetheless. They were attributes of Desmond that he masked with nightlife, which was always his answer, but during the pandemic, everything changed. He was different; his career began to pivot, and his goals were pivoting as well. However, creativity always creeps up on us in mysterious ways, and it happens with — you’re going to be tired of us saying this word — conversation. Desmond began to value the interactions he would have, which always included a great meal and a few cocktails. Those moments would unlock thoughts we didn’t have before. Towards the end of last year, Desmond shared this epiphany on a semi-impromptu Zoom call with a stranger, now business partner and dear friend, me. We shared our desires to create an intimate form of networking and our annoyances with corporations, draining the purity of what we believe a dinner holds. I said, ‘We should throw our own dinners,’ and this was the start of something new. Dine With Dez is an immersive food experience focused on the exploration of conversation and cuisine. Our first experiment was to curate a series of intimate dinners that were hyperfocused on connection. What do you do in a space of unfamiliar faces? How do we create the spark that turns a stranger into a friend? Our newsletter will give you a wider retrospect of not just our journey but our full thought process as we continue to grow, as well as recommendations for where to eat, stay, and party across the world.
Desmond Sam: Dine with Dez is an immersive dinner series designed to connect strangers in a safe space over the art of cuisine and conversation! Our mission is to break the barriers of how we network to be less stuffy and cliche.
How did you realize the vision?
RR: You know when you meet someone, and you just know that a relationship exists? That's how I felt when I met Dez. It's funny but also super reassuring how often our thoughts, ideas, and solutions align without even needing to talk to each other. We call or text each other, and the other person expresses the exact same idea the other person has.
DS: Honestly, it was really organic and natural. I met my now business partner last year around this time, and we were discussing this weird period of life I was in. I wanted to find an alternative to nightlife, and he was looking to dive into new spaces as well. This conversation led us to realize that dinners are the best way to connect with others because the two things I love to do are eat and talk while I'm eating. Once we had that realization, the rest was history.
Photography by André Uncut
How do you choose who to invite to each dinner?
RR: We always start by crafting a long list of target and dream attendees. We reach out to our network of talent and agents and see who is in town. We also do research by scrolling through social media or googling who the ‘it’ people are right now. From there, we sit down together and try to build an extremely robust room of people from different industries who we feel will illuminate the room to add insightful thoughts and conversation.
DS: Each dinner has a certain theme or vibe that helps with the direction of how we want to curate the room. It is very important to me to make sure everyone is in space with like-minded intentions. We want to make sure everyone is comfortable and allow them to let their guard down. It's vital that our guests can contribute to electric conversation without fear of being vulnerable.
What interactive games and activities do the diners participate in during the dinner?
RR: Throughout this year, we have experimented with different ways to have guests answer questions. At first, we started with Dez and I writing 20 questions and then having guests pick a random number one through 20, which would correspond to the question they had to answer. Now, we are experimenting with having guests write their own questions, and someone else randomly picks them and answers them. We've also had chefs come out and present the questions for discussion for that specific course.
DS: We love to get the room spicy! Usually, we do some rendition of a question game. It's now evolved to such a core part of our dinners because it really breaks the ice and gives a good pulse to the ambiance. This game can go from questions we've internally developed, or now we'll have our guests come up with their own questions, which has been very fun.
Have you had a favorite dinner so far? If so, why was it your favorite?
RR: It's hard not to say Paris because how can you not enjoy traveling abroad for your passion and work? But I will also say the NYFW dinner with Jojo Siwa because I felt that dinner was a real turning point for the Dine with Dez brand and our brand recognition.
DS: Hmmm, that is a tough one because I truly have loved every single dinner. However, creatively, I would say our cannabis dinner was my favorite. A seven-course cannabis-infused dinner by Michelin chefs is literally every pothead's wet dream, whether they know it or not. Also, capturing interviews of our guests on video was iconic. I got to see just how gorgeous and eclectic my guests were. It brought me to tears to know I could get such a fabulous group of people together in this way. I felt seen, trusted, and loved by not only friends but complete strangers who had just met me moments ago. By the end, we all felt like one big, high family!
You recently collaborated with Ladygunn to bring Jojo Siwa to a recent dinner. Could you tell me more about how that came to life?
RR: It was so spur of the moment, but that's how most of our dinners materialize. Desmond and I initially agreed to do nothing and take it easy for New York Fashion Week, as we wanted our full attention to be on Paris. Nevertheless, about two weeks before the dinner date, we were approached with this opportunity, which was just too good to pass on. We were able to secure a restaurant partner pretty early on, but with only five days until the dinner, they pulled out. Luckily, I had a great connection with Ray's and Authentic Hospitality and was able to quickly find a true partner.
DS: Wow, this is a legendary story. I remember getting a call from Ladygunn's editor-in-chief, and he said, ‘I really want to have a dinner to celebrate my new cover star. Who else would I call but the king of dinner parties?’ Now, that statement gagged me, but once he told me that Miss Siwa was the cover star, I was fully invested. Then I realized that we had about less than a week to pull it off, so I frantically called Ramses like I usually do, and he helped me pull together probably one of our most high-profile dinners to date. It was major!
Tell me about yourselves and what you do outside of Dine With Dez.
RR: Outside of Dine With Dez, I currently work in the liquor industry. My professional career has always been in the hospitality industry, one way or the other. Whether I was a server, working in hospitality public relations, or working in the liquor industry, I was always looking for jobs or a career that was active and made me excited to get out of bed in the morning. I'm also an avid skier and soccer player and speak fluent Spanish and French. I also love to cook, and I guess that's why I ended up in the dinner production gig. But for me, these types of conversations surrounding partnerships, events, and coordination have always come naturally to me.
DS: Outside of Dine With Dez, I have been a publicist at a firm called The Chamber Group for about four years. Beforehand, I worked in fashion as a community director for a brand called VFILES and modeled for many years. The cultivation of my relationships really started and only continued to blossom.
Photography by Desmond Sam
What would you like to do for Dine With Dez in the near future?
RR: We are looking to really expand our YouTube page and eventually pitch a show about the conversations that happen at our dinners. I want to grow Dine With Dez into two parts: a production company that produces dinners for brands seeking that kind of experience and where Dez and I produce our own dinners that we ideate and are close to our own hearts.
DS: The sky's the limit for Dine With Dez, honestly. I see us taking our dinners around the world, building our newsletter to be a huge platform, and hopefully taking these conversations even further. A TV moment is definitely a goal of mine. The revolution should be televised, no?
What’s been your favorite memory or connection from the dinners?
RR: Traveling to Paris Fashion Week with my girlfriend to produce an amazing dinner and a cocktail soiree. Every person I've had the pleasure of meeting during our dinners has been such an amazing soul, so it's hard to point someone out, but what I can say is that this year with Dine With Dez has truly been my favorite year of my life!
DS: I think my favorite memory was our Dry January Dinner earlier this year. It was the start of the conceptualization of this idea of a dinner party. I felt like that dinner was my ‘Eureka!’ moment. The sweet journey of our dinners is how immersive you become before, during, and after.
How can people participate in Dine With Dez?
RR: Interact with us! DM us, email us, pester us! If we don't know who you are or why you want a seat at the table, how can we ever invite you? Occasionally, we hold social media contests to win a seat or promote a community event, but if you want to get a coveted invitation, don't be afraid to come up and introduce yourselves. Don't worry — we don't bite!
DS: Follow us via Instagram or subscribe to our newsletters to keep up with our journey. Our events are invite-only, but we have a plethora of plans to expand and give more opportunities for more people to have a seat at our table!
