Every time I sat down at my yiayia's table in Brooklyn, there was something on the stove. It didn't matter what time you showed up. It didn't matter if she was expecting you. Something was always going. Whether it was a pot of fakes or gigantes cooling on the counter. The smell of oregano that had been dried by hand somewhere in Central Greece and carried over in someone's suitcase.
The thing is that she never wrote any of it down. It lived in her body and her hands. She passed in January 2024 and I've been sitting with the question ever since - how do you preserve something that was never written down? How do you carry it forward?
The Table started as my attempt to find out. Once a month a small group of us gathers online, each at our own table with something we've made, reading the same book and then coming back on Sundays to cook together in real time. We talk about what we've inherited and what we're still trying to hold onto. We read it. Then we cook it.
This past spring our founding cohort gathered three times. Every single session ran over. Nobody wanted to go.
At a Glance
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A carefully chosen book
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A curated playlist rooted in the music of each book's world
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Discussion questions and a personal reflection prompt
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Veganized recipe developed by Christina
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A Tuesday evening discussion
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A Sunday cooking session
The kind of women who show up with their whole selves.
That's The Table.
Where we've been
The Table started in the spring of 2026. Three months, three books, a small group of women who showed up every time.
We read The Blue Zones Solution by Dan Buettner and ended up talking less about food and more about the grandmothers who held everything together. We read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and talked about plants as relatives and what the earth gives us and what we owe back. We closed with Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and talked about the roles placed on women without their consent and the power that lived in their kitchens anyway.
Women left those gatherings feeling grateful and centered. Stories of grandmothers came out. Someone said she didn't know how to recreate her grandmother's dish and probably never would. That landed hard in the room.
The founding cohort is complete.
What comes next goes deeper.
The Diaspora Table / Το Τραπέζι
Fall 2026 Circle now in session...
Our fall cohort is underway. Over nine weeks and three memoirs, we meet three women living in the space between where their food comes from and where they actually are.
North of Ithaka by Eleni N. Gage - September
A Greek American woman returns to rebuild her grandmother's home in a remote mountain village. We cooked Greek apple jam together.
Khabaar by Madhushree Ghosh - October
A Bengali refugee's daughter keeping her parents' memory alive through food. We cook together in October - with author Madhushree Ghosh joining us live.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner - November
A Korean American woman learning to cook her dying mother's dishes as a way of holding onto her. We close the season in November with Korean pumpkin porridge.
Each month we gather on Tuesdays to discuss and on Sundays to cook together in real time - a simple seasonal plant-based dish rooted in that month's book.
The fall cohort is full. Join the waitlist for spring 2027 below.
About Christina
I'm Christina Gdisis. I grew up at a Greek table - first generation American, my family from Central Greece and the island of Chios. My grandmother Yiayia Giannoula cooked from whatever the season gave her, every single day, intuitively. I don't think she ever thought of herself as preserving anything. To her, she was simply cooking. But what she was doing was keeping something alive that I'm still trying to hold onto.
The Table is my attempt to build a space where women can do that together.
Read more at christinagdisis.substack.com