EatWith: a delicious way to travel

Beatrice Verga

SEETIES EatWith is a startup founded in 2012 by Guy Michlin and Shemer Schwartz and headquartered right along the Mediterranean Sea in sunny Tel Aviv, Israel. The website www.EatWith.com is a community marketplace offering local dining experiences in people’s homes around the world. Try new dishes, meet new people and experience the hottest trend in foodie travel!

A DELICIOUS NEW WAY TO TRAVEL EatWith is a global community that invites you to dine in homes around the world. Connect with amazing hosts, share stories and unforgettable experiences, and enjoy delicious homemade cuisine.

ENJOY AN AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE One of the joys of traveling is experiencing cultures unlike our own. Being a guest in someone’s home is a great way to get an authentic local perspective in a different city or country.

EAT DELICIOUS LOCAL CUISINE Whether it’s homemade paella from a backyard grill in Toledo, Spain, or a 9-course meal at a family farm outside Florence, Italy, EatWith hosts are serving up dishes you’ll be salivating over for years to come!

TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT! EatWith offers a new kind of social experience that lets you meet interesting people in the comfort and intimacy of someone’s home – whether you’re in your hometown or traveling the world.

BE A HOST Invite people from all over the world to Eat With you! Share with them your favorite dishes and unique cultural insights. As an EatWith host, you can nurture your passion for cooking and hosting, show off your cooking skills and connect with people from around the globe.

Fairy lights in Glori and Victoria’s Brooklyn apartment. EatWith Glorimarta in New York: http://goo.gl/mXzus

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HOW EATWITH WAS BORN

On one very memorable evening in 2010, while vacationing on the island of Crete, I had the extraordinary privilege of dining at the home of the Papadakis family. The connection was made through a friend of a friend. It was a small two bedroom apartment in a suburb of Heraklion (the main city in Crete). They were so excited to host a traveler for dinner that they invited their neighbors and their cousin from Athens to join. The main topic over dinner was the Greek financial crisis and how every family had at least one family member that was unemployed. Theirs was a perspective I definitely had not gotten from the headlines.

They offered me tips on places to visit, told me about restaurants where the locals eat, and even gave me a bottle of local Cretan liquor as a gift. I still have the bottle – it’s empty. For dinner, we had an absolutely delicious Cretan dish known in Greek as “makaronia with kreas vodino and tiri athotiro”. Translation: spaghetti with meat (beef) and a local Cretan cheese (athotiro) on top. It was amazing! After four hours – and I’m sure no one was looking at their watches – it was time to say goodbye. I originally planned on being there only two hours, but wow, how the time flew! Truly a unique experience I will never forget.

In all my years of traveling, connecting with the locals has always made my experiences more meaningful. I enjoy tours, museums, tourist sites, and eating at great restaurants. But as a tourist, it’s easy to feel disconnected, like you’re walking in a bubble. The best way to break the bubble and enrich your connection to a place is to interact with real people in their own private spaces. After my evening with the Papadakis’s, this is exactly what happened.

I was inspired. When I returned home, I shared my experience with my friend Shemer, and we began to envision a global community of enthusiastic guests and passionate hosts. We imagined a website where users could discover amazing hosts around the world, delicious homemade cuisine, and recount their stories of unforgettable experiences.

So there you have it. That’s how EatWith was born. If you’re as passionate as we are about meeting new people, eating amazing homemade dishes and doing something a little different, then we would love to extend you a warm welcome to join our growing community!

Bon Voyage & Bon Appetit!

Guy Michlin and Shemer Schwartz, Founders of EatWith