The idea
Chef-led dinners on the water. One table at a time.
First table · Fall 2026 · By invitation
Dock is a supper club hosted aboard FLOHOM houseboats. The chef designs the menu around something they actually want to cook, built from what the Bay and the farms around it are giving that week. Guests sit at one table. The chef tells them where the food came from, and names everyone whose hands were on it.
We are starting small on purpose. The first tables are free. The ones after that run through the winter at a discount, priced below what the night actually costs. A handful of editions between now and spring, funded as a loss we are choosing to take. Time enough to get the food right, the flow right, and the numbers right before a ticket price has to carry any of it.
We start on the Chesapeake because it is where we are from. The format is built to travel — FLOHOM operates in other markets, and every one of them has its own chefs, its own growers, and its own water. Same structure, different harbor, local people in every seat.
Most of what follows is a proposal rather than a plan. We would rather build it with you than hand it to you finished.
The format
The shape of a night — proposed
What we handle
The first
tables
No tickets, no invoices. Ten seats, picked as a deliberate mix. Some of the room works in food and some of it does not. Some we know well, and some we have never met. A table of only familiar faces is a dinner party, and this is meant to open outward.
The range is what makes it a good night. These are also the first people who get to say they were there, and what they say afterward is how the next table fills.
The chef is paid the same whether the table pays or not. A free room is our expense to carry, not yours. Anyone we cannot seat at Edition 01 gets brought in another way, and there will be plenty of ways.
Thursday, October 29. Ten people, by invitation. Full detail on the next page.
Thursday, November 12, held in case we want to go again soon after. A wider circle, nothing committed.
Still small, still priced below cost. We are buying information, not margin.
Larger tables, a published calendar, membership, and a print publication.
Edition 01
the prototype
Everything on this page came out of the meeting with Al on September 29. What carries a Set mark is agreed between us. What carries Open is still being worked and is on the list at the end.
The menu — draft one
From Al, September 30. Dish names are still being written. Sequence below is reordered from his list to run light to heavy, with the katsu sando moved to the arrival so the standing half-hour has something in hand and the seated meal runs to six courses.
Dock handles sourcing and pays for it. Not every item will come from a Chesapeake producer for the first edition, and that is fine — the network grows as we meet more growers, watermen, and makers, and each edition should carry more of it than the last. A few ideas for where to start, if any of them are useful. Oysters open October 1 and late October is about the best they get. Rockfish is running. Blue crab is open through mid-December. Maryland corn is finished by September, so sweet potato, butternut, or celery root might sit better under a crab cake this time of year.
What is in the room
A violinist playing covers of popular music, already playing before the first guest steps aboard. The sound reaches them before anything else does. On the roof if the weather allows it, below if it does not.
Instax prints to take home, and digital copies sent the same night for anyone who wants to post. The physical one is the keepsake. The digital one is the reach.
It is dark by 6:10, so light is what makes the boat feel like anything at all. Lamps, candles, low pools of it at the rail and on the surfaces people touch. Nothing overhead, nothing that flattens a face. Warm throughout, so skin and food both read well in a photograph. The rooftop firepits are built into the boat. Torches along the rail are a question for the marina and may well come back a no, so string lights are being priced as the alternative and may end up in the plan either way.
A branded blanket handed to each guest at the gate, before the walk down the pier. Rolled, tied, and tagged with their name, so it is also how they find their seat. Warm when they need it, theirs to keep at the end.
How the evening runs
Proposed pacing, not a fixed clock. Six courses across two and a half hours puts roughly twenty-five to thirty minutes between plates, which is enough room to eat, hear the chef, and talk to the person beside you without the night dragging.
The first edition is deliberately subsidized. What we get back is a night we have actually run start to finish, the photographs and film to show people what it is, and a room full of people who will talk about it.
For the chefs
A restaurant is a lease, a payroll, a build-out, and a menu that has to please everyone who walks in. A supper club is none of that. It is a room, a night, and a table of people who came because of you.
No debt, no five-year term, no staff to carry through a slow February. The overhead belongs to us.
Every edition is built around whoever is cooking it. Who taught you, where the dish comes from, what you are trying to say with it. Nobody is asked to cook our theme.
Most people at that table will never have eaten your food, and many will never have set foot on a boat like this. They arrive curious about both and leave knowing your name, your sourcing, and where to find you next. That following is yours.
A menu you have been carrying around for years can run in front of real diners. If it works, you have proof. If it does not, it cost you one night.
An edition is one midweek night. It sits next to a full-time kitchen, a catering business, or a private client list without competing with any of them.
Sourcing stays with you
Choosing what the menu needs and who it should come from is part of the cooking, not an errand to hand off. That decision is yours. What we take on is the transaction — placing the orders and paying the producers directly, so you are never fronting money for our food cost and nobody is waiting on a reimbursement.
Bring your own people. A grower you have worked with for years is exactly who we want, and so is somebody we have never heard of. If you would rather walk the market or pick the fish yourself, there is a discretionary line for exactly that, and we would rather you used it.
The one thing we hold to is buying local to wherever the edition is happening, from the people who grew it, caught it, or made it. That rules out broadline distributors like Sysco and US Foods, and very little else.
Where we are useful is continuity. Dock is buying across a whole season rather than a single night, so the farms, boats, and bakeries behind the editions get steady orders and the terms that come with them. The people you bring become part of that, and the relationship stays yours.
If you already cook for people who book a FLOHOM stay, nothing here takes that away. Those are private bookings. Dock editions are public dinners on the midweek nights when the boats are quiet anyway, in front of people who did not know these boats existed and had never eaten your food. When one of them wants a night like that for an anniversary, that booking is yours.
For farmers,
makers, and
restaurants
A chef is one part of the table. The waterman, the farm, the baker, the roaster, and the kitchen that lends its line are the rest of it. Dock buys from all of them at real prices and puts their names in front of the people eating.
Not “local greens.” The farm or the boat, by name, on the card in front of every guest. The dinner becomes a showroom for what you pulled that week.
We buy from you directly. No middleman, nobody taking a cut on the way. Once the schedule is regular we can work out standing terms together.
Guests who fall for an ingredient can join a CSA or start a standing order before they leave the boat.
The table does not have to be on the water. A dinner in the field at harvest, in the packing house, on the dock where the boat comes in — that is an edition too, and one we want to run.
A batch that is not in production yet goes into a composed dish and gets eaten the way it is meant to be eaten. The early editions put it in front of chefs and producers. After that it is a room of people paying close attention to their food, which tells you something a tasting booth never will.
A cheese, a hot sauce, a loaf, a roast built into a course and explained by the chef who chose it.
What the room loves, the room buys. Retail at the end of the night, no shelf fee, no slotting.
A baker and a creamery on one menu. A roaster and a distiller on the last course. The table is the introduction.
The independents. Mom and pop kitchens, sole proprietors, one location with the owner still in it. Not chains, not private equity rollups.
A slow night turns into a booked room with a crowd that has never walked through your door.
Run the menu you are not ready to commit to. Learn what works before it goes on the permanent one.
Give a sous chef a night with their name on it. Talent stays where it gets to create.
If prep runs through your line, you are named on the menu and in everything written about that edition.
We buy product at real prices. Nobody is asked to donate for exposure, and that does not change when the table is free.
The money
Edition 01 has no ticket at all, so we carry the whole night. From there the numbers have to start working. Nothing below is settled. Move the figures and tell us where they should land.
Still open
and who has it
Five things have to land before October 29, plus two format questions underneath them. Nothing here is a problem. It is the list we are working from, and it is honest about who is holding what.
One long table, or the boat as it stands. Six plated courses want a surface. A cocktail format does not have one. Everything else waits on this.
Al, Cheyenne, Siani, Pier · MondayThe Tasting if it is seated. Something drinks-led if it is not. Follows the seating decision rather than leading it.
All of us · after seating landsFLO 13 confirmed and the rate agreed. Pier and Siani are taking this to FLOHOM leadership this week.
Pier and Siani · this weekDraft one is in. Still open: dish names, the sourcing brief from us, and real cost per cover. Three courses carry shellfish, so allergies have to be collected at invitation rather than at the door.
Al and Cheyenne, with a sourcing brief from SianiSeven drinks across three hours wants two to three ounce pours and something low in alcohol across a course or two.
Siani, Pier, Al, CheyennePrep, equipment, and setup all sit with Al and Cheyenne as part of their service. We only get the boat on the day, so everything loads in on the 29th. What we still need from FLOHOM is the hour we can get aboard, since that sets how much runway there is before 6:30.
Al and Cheyenne · ahead of the eventTen people, a deliberate mix rather than a category. Some work in food, some do not. People we know and trust, and a few whose reach helps this find its audience. Names from Al and Cheyenne welcome and wanted.
Siani, Pier · names from AlPhotography, videography, and the violinist.
Siani, PierCollaboration Agreement for Edition 01: The Prototype. Dock pays for food and services. Structural for now, no numbers in it. Draft to Al by end of week so there is something concrete to work through on Monday.
Siani · end of weekThe firepits are built into the boat. Torches along the rail need a yes from the marina and may not get one. String lights are being priced as the alternative and may end up in the plan either way.
Siani, PierDinners come first. There is more behind them — a membership, something printed, a way for the people who build this to hold a piece of it. That comes later. Right now we are cooking.