Making Friends and Baking Together: The Unconventional Rules of Cookbook Club Naarm

Here is the kicker.

The Bottom Line

• The Core Concept: Founded by friends Joan Tran and Dominique Lonsdale in 2024 at Carlton Gardens, the club requires every attendee to cook from a single, pre-selected cookbook coordinated via a meticulous spreadsheet.
• The Scale: What started as a casual gathering has exploded into a hot ticket. More than 100 participants recently descended on Richmond to celebrate the club’s 18th event and two-year anniversary, with tickets selling out in minutes.
• The Cultural Parallel: Attendees playfully liken the hyper-popular monthly meetups to music festivals or run clubs, but with a distinctly pastry-heavy twist that prioritizes genuine community-building over physical endurance.

Inside Melbourne’s Hottest Culinary Social Experiment

Back in 2024, co-founders Joan Tran and Dominique Lonsdale wanted an excuse to try new recipes while navigating post-relocation life in Melbourne. They launched the very first Cookbook Club Naarm on the grass in Carlton Gardens, utilizing an Instagram page to signal the experiment to the public. To their initial shock, absolute strangers showed up bearing plates of fresh bakes pulled straight from Claire Saffitz’s What’s For Dessert. What began as a casual experiment in breaking bread has since calcified into an intensely loyal, supportive community.

By the time the club celebrated its two-year anniversary in late August with its 18th official gathering, the operational logistics had grown remarkably sophisticated. Organizers now circulate a meticulous spreadsheet prior to each event, ensuring that the 100-plus participants coordinate their chosen recipes from the featured text. For the anniversary milestone, the chosen bible was The Bakers’ Book, an anthology of sweet and savoury baking recipes by various Australian authors, edited by Ruby Goss.

The resulting spread in Richmond covered three entire tables with cakes, pies, tarts, and meringues. Decorations ranged from delicate floral arrangements to heavy dustings of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Among the standout creations were Brodie Nalywajko’s rendition of Rosemary Andrews’s eight-layer chocolate cake decorated with gold leaf, and Ingrid Yu’s sculptural three-tiered showstopper inspired by Alice Bennett’s classic chocolate cake, complete with elaborate buttercream matching the book cover’s exact palette.

Connecting Over Carbs in the Age of Digital Isolation

In an era where modern socializing often feels dictated by algorithm-driven run clubs or isolated digital spaces, Cookbook Club Naarm offers a refreshingly tactile alternative. Attendee Nu Tran aptly describes the monthly phenomenon to The Guardian as “the music festival [for] people in their 30s,” noting the fierce demand that causes tickets to vanish within minutes.

Attending alongside friends Marina Nguyen and Tiffany Dang, Nu joked about the group’s choice of weekend activity compared to fitness-obsessed peers. “We can’t all go to run clubs. This is our version. We’re getting diabetes at our community events, whereas they’re just getting fitter,” she quipped.

For regulars like Ingrid Yu, who harbors aspirations of turning professional baker, the club provides an indispensable social anchor. “I have made a lot of friends through the cookbook club … I don’t think I would have made them otherwise,” Yu reflected, highlighting how the physical act of presenting edible homework breaks down social barriers. Editor Ruby Goss echoed this sentiment, expressing amazement at seeing every single recipe from a published cookbook brought to life simultaneously in one room—a rare feat in the contemporary literary and culinary landscape.

The Operational Blueprint of a Modern Supper Club

Event Milestone	Key Detail	Source Reference
Inaugural Gathering	Held in 2024 at Carlton Gardens using Claire Saffitz’s What’s For Dessert.	The Guardian
Anniversary Milestone	The 18th event in late August drew over 100 attendees in Richmond.	The Guardian
Featured Text	The Bakers’ Book, edited by Ruby Goss.	The Guardian

What do you think? Would you brave a grueling two-page shortcrust recipe just to secure a ticket to your local food club, or do you prefer keeping your kitchen experiments strictly private? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo: diningandcooking.com