A few months ago, we went to check out Pith, the secret supper club started by Columbia University senior Jonah Reider. When you meet Jonah, you will understand quickly that Pith is unlike other supper clubs in New York City. For one, this is not about profit at all. For $15 a person, you get a five to eight course meal with wine pairings – with level of produce quality and cuisine creativity we’ve found in only some of the city’s most cutting edge restaurants.
Produced four days a week, each dinner was for just four people at a time, which explains the 4,000 person waitlist – after all, Jonah was also ostensibly writing his thesis this semester. Driving it all, as Jonah explained during our dinner, was a curiosity to meet interesting people and explore his culinary passion. He never repeated a dish twice, always evolving and testing new things.
He began Pith in a dorm room and later happened to move to faculty housing along Morningside Drive in a pre-war style apartment of a professor who had gone on sabbatical. The long wooden table, church pew bench, chandeliers, free-standing candelabras and piano was befitting of a student who dreamed big. It is this professor who has evicted Jonah, starting May 31st from the dorms, citing “conditions hazardous to tenants in the faculty building.” Ironically, many Columbia University faculty members were on the waiting list and have encouraged him to keep going.
Meanwhile, Jonah has been involved in a lot of other projects up his sleeve, including an upcoming second participation on Metropolis Ensemble’s Brownstone series, a multi-sensory food and art extravaganza in the American Irish Historical Society, a Gilded Age mansion on Fifth Avenue, that will take place this upcoming Monday. This month, the Pith supper club is also in a pop-up space at the FRONT Art Space in Tribeca.
At the Historical Society earlier this week, Jonah told us that he had plenty of offers from people on the waitlist to host Pith in other apartments. The supper club will continue in a new yet-to-be-determined location, but Jonah is ever busy with current and future projects. Stay tuned for our continued coverage as Pith re-emerges later this summer. Sign up for the waiting list at Pith.
Next, check out 6 other supper clubs in New York City.
