
Friendships and more begin to cook up when strangers bond over shared meals.
Removing the intestines from shrimp doesn’t sound like an appealing way to spend a Saturday night, but this is what I find myself doing one chilly weekend evening in November. I’m one of nine strangers making dinner together at Co-cooking Lab, a company that hosts cooking workshops for networking, friend-making, corporate team building, and even dating.
This one is a friend-making event, and I find myself having a lot of fun at it. Not only am I learning how to devein shrimp – a fiddly maneuver that requires slitting a line down the back of the crustacean’s body to remove the digestive tract and, yes, its fecal contents – but I’m also enjoying great conversation and lots of laughter.
Co-cooking Lab was founded in 2018 by Craig Chen, a bespectacled former consultant with an infectious laugh and a passion for experimenting in the kitchen. His hope is that strangers can bond with each other through making and eating food together. It’s an idea that emerged when he began renting his spare room out on AirBnB after he quit his consultant job and needed to earn a bit of cash. “If I could share my spare room with strangers for money, why not share my kitchen with strangers for money?” he asks.

In an era where smartphones have ushered in an epidemic of loneliness and people are abandoning dating apps as toxic spaces, bringing people together to cook and eat seems nostalgically wholesome.
Some companies bypass the kitchen altogether and go straight for the dinner table. Anyone in Taipei with a Facebook or Instagram account has likely noticed a recent barrage of ads from a company called Timeleft promising to “fight big-city loneliness.” This French-headquartered firm charges a small fee (NT$330) to algorithmically match you with five strangers for a Wednesday evening dinner at a local restaurant. Having entered the Taiwan market only in October last year, Timeleft quickly gained traction. By the end of November, the company reported that tens of thousands of people had signed up.
Back at Co-cooking Lab, before we’re allowed to get our hands on chopping boards, knives, and mixing bowls, Chen sits us down and asks us to do a brief self-introduction, which includes a summary of our cooking experience – little to none, it seems, for most of the participants.
“I don’t have a kitchen in my studio apartment, so I always eat out,” one young man tells the group.
“My mother would never let me in the kitchen,” says another.
Chen says that many of his first-time customers (he gets a lot of repeat customers) tell him they are worried that they won’t be able to take part properly because they don’t know how to cook. He assures everyone that it’s not a problem. “This is not a cooking class – we will all help each other,” he says.
It’s true – we do. We’re split into groups and tasked to make a variety of dishes while Chen dashes around the kitchen throwing out orders – wash this, chop that, not that way, this way – and demonstrates the right techniques. My group makes baked fish and a Mediterranean shrimp dish for which the shrimp heads have to be brutally bashed during the frying stage to make a blood-orange colored sauce. I’m grateful that my two cooking partners handle the shrimp head removal and bashing part. In return, I do all the deveining.
At 7:30 p.m. sharp – after 90 whirlwind minutes of cooking – we sit down to eat our humble yet tasty banquet. The shrimp turns out pretty well. Among the dishes cooked up by the others is a delicious pumpkin and potato soup, a scrambled tomato and egg dish, and mini pork burgers sandwiched between slices of seared zucchini. Someone has brought a jar of homemade pomelo sweet wine, and we raise our glasses to our hard work.

The room, which had initially been filled with shy smiles and a touch of awkwardness, is by the end of the night lively with animated chatter. Participants compliment each other’s culinary skills, and we all laugh over a plate of purple, burnt chicken (although one participant declares it their favorite dish). Several people swap Line contacts, and two of the men head off to a bar to cement their new friendship. Meanwhile, two of the women tell me they’ve attended several of Chen’s events.
Where values lead, connections follow
Chen gradually built his company over the years, starting out by hosting events in the kitchen of his own apartment. Along the way, he teamed up with YouTube influencers and professional chefs to host events, though he later ended these partnerships. He tells me that these experiences taught him a valuable lesson – if he wanted to succeed, he had to rely on himself. Today Chen handles nearly every aspect of the business himself, operating out of a spacious, professional kitchen in Taipei’s bustling Xinyi District. Throughout the years, he has also worked on his own culinary skills.
“If cooking is the core of my business, then I needed to be a chef,” he says. To this end, he took professional cooking courses and earned certifications. When he travels, Chen still signs up for classes to learn how to make the local cuisine. In 2020, during one such trip, he found himself in Vietnam taking a Vietnamese cooking class when Covid broke out.
The friend-making event is fun, but Chen’s main business is his opposite-sex dating events, which are organized most weekends. Four men and four women sign up to cook a menu designed by Chen and then eat together. He claims some of his clients have even gotten married to someone they met at his events.

In contrast, Timeleft takes pains to emphasize that it is not a dating app.
“Don’t come with the idea of finding love,” reads an email from the company I received after signing up for a one-off soiree in November. “The dinner has much more to offer!” The site will prompt you to sign up for a one-, three-, or six-month subscription plan, but you can also just commit to one dinner (the fee does not include the price of the dinner).
Those who wish to participate have to fill out a brief questionnaire, which includes your profession, age, gender, and food and language preferences (English and Chinese for Taiwan). There’s no option to fill out your sexuality, though, which unfortunately means that it can’t be used for the purpose of meeting LGBTQ+ friends in the city.
Ashley Yip, Timeleft’s Hong Kong and Taiwan flagship manager, explains that the company intentionally refrains from asking participants about their sexuality, aiming instead to create a diverse mix of people at each dinner. However, she notes that discussions are underway about potentially adding this feature in the future. “We don’t want to narrow the pool,” she says.
Six strangers are loosely matched by age (ensuring the gap isn’t too wide) and by profession to include a range of occupations. For safety reasons, the groups are designed so that there is never a solo woman among the attendees. However, Yip adds that any other combination of genders is possible. It’s an approach that only works if everyone shows up for the dinner, and anecdotal evidence suggests that’s not always the case.
The night of my Timeleft dinner, it’s drizzling with rain and I’m running late, stuck on a bus. I arrive 10 minutes tardy to find that my table has only two diners – both male. A bottle of wine has already been opened, and one of the guys has even ordered his food. The atmosphere feels a bit chaotic and, to be honest, a little awkward. I’m offered a glass of red wine. Soon, two more guests – both women – arrive, and the awkwardness recedes. The sixth dinner guest never shows up.
None of us is rude enough to ask each other’s ages, but judging from how we describe our lives (some are parents, others are focused on their careers), it seems the app got it right and that we are mostly part of the same generation. There’s a restaurant owner, an IT worker, an importer-exporter, a former front-desk hotel worker, and me, the journalist.
By the time the second bottle of wine is ordered, conversation is flowing effortlessly, veering in unusual directions. We discuss sommelier schools in Taipei, tips on how to hike Machu Picchu, the war in Ukraine, Japanese mercenaries fighting in the aforementioned war, and the availability of psychedelics in Brazil. The importer-exporter adds a surprising tidbit about the most popular products sold by Taiwan to North Korea before the trade was banned (Coca-Cola and phones, apparently). The topic then moves to ChatGPT’s potential to cure depression and the importance of having multiple Gmail accounts to sign in to different apps to avoid being tracked.
It’s a heady mix of topics that reflect the diversity of experiences and perspectives at the table, making for an engaging and enjoyable evening.
All of us except the IT worker are first-time users of Timeleft. This is her third group dinner, and she made friends – even a cycling buddy – from previous evenings. A few others mention that they have signed up for the subscription service and are already looking forward to future dinners.
At the end of the dinner, we make a Line group that’s quickly filled with chirpy promises to meet again sometime in the future at the restaurateur’s establishment.
Timeleft was founded by French entrepreneur Maxime Barbier two years ago. What began in just two cities – Paris and Lisbon – has now spread to more than 60 countries. In Taiwan, Timeleft’s reach extends beyond Taipei to include Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Taichung, and most recently Chiayi.
“It’s grown super quickly as the concept goes with Taiwanese culture very well,” Yip says. “The food culture is very strong here, and everyone loves eating out.”
The average Taiwanese Timeleft user is between 25 and 40 years old, skewing slightly younger than in other markets, says Yip. In Europe, the company also attracts many customers in their mid-70s. In Asia, Timeleft has expanded to Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. It’s a handy option for travelers looking to connect with locals.
Yip says the app went through several iterations before arriving at its current simple model: every Wednesday and six strangers. Six is the magic number because it’s just the right size to fit comfortably at most restaurant tables while still providing enough variety among the guests. It also takes the pressure off introverts.
“In a group of six, you don’t feel like you always have to engage in the conversation – you can take a moment to simply listen to the others,” says Yip. This balance ensures a comfortable and enjoyable experience for all participants, regardless of their social preferences.
Why Wednesday? Yip explains that it’s easier to secure restaurant reservations midweek, and the timing offers a “mini weekend vibe.” She adds that the company selects mid-price restaurants that are “internationally minded.” The process involves scouring online reviews and ratings from sources like Google Maps to find places with decent scores and then building a database of restaurants for participants to enjoy.

Where the sidewalk ends
At the end of our dinner, Timeleft messages us with the name of a bar it has booked that night for us app users. It’s a feature the company calls “Last Drinks.” Since the anointed establishment is a 10-minute walk from our restaurant, I decide to tag along.
We arrive at a funky basement bar. Even on a rainy Wednesday night, the place is packed. Between 50 and 100 people, all Timeleft customers, fill the space. Most appear to be Taiwanese or at least East Asian. Two guys rush over to say hello to the IT worker. They greet each other like old friends. Turns out they first met at a previous Timeleft dinner.
Curious about Timeleft, Co-Cooking Lab’s Chen signed up for the service. I ask him how his dinner went.
“Wow!” he exclaims. He says that he enjoyed himself so much he signed up for another month. “I love to try new things.”
He tells me that the night of his dinner, a typhoon was brewing. Five guests showed up. They found themselves at a vegan restaurant, but none of them were vegan – and even worse, one was an avid meat lover. The group quickly deduced that the no-show must have been the vegan and decided to move on to a restaurant that served meat. Chen recognized one of the diners from one of his dating events. After finishing their meaty dinner, the group opted for Karaoke rather than the bar.
“We had fun that night, but none of us kept in contact,” he tells me.
His experience seems to be par for the course. In my Timeleft Line group, the former hotel worker posted photos of our dinner and us goofing around at the bar later that night. But two weeks later, no one – me included – has left another message.
It might be time for me to try Timeleft again.