Imagine buying a ticket to a dinner without knowing the menu, the courses, or what’s coming out of the kitchen and still selling the event out.

That’s the concept behind Eat The Boot’s Blind Dinner Series, and it’s quietly become one of the most exciting ways local restaurants in Louisiana get to showcase their creativity.

Eat The Boot, a local podcast and Facebook group with over 120K active users, has facilitated these dinners as a way to remove the risk that often comes with doing something new in a restaurant. Instead of asking chefs to gamble on unfamiliar dishes making it onto a regular menu, Eat The Boot guarantees a full room for one night and lets the kitchen take over from there.

“I joke that it started with purely selfish intentions,” said Tony Ridinger of Eat The Boot. “I knew Baton Rouge had incredibly talented chefs, but diners aren’t always ready to step outside their comfort zone.”

So Eat The Boot used its community to change that.

For each blind dinner, the restaurant sets the price, chooses the number of courses, and creates the menu with zero input from Eat The Boot. The team doesn’t help plan it, and they don’t even know what’s being served ahead of time. Their role is simple sell the tickets and fill the seats.

“No markup. We don’t make anything off of them,” Tony said. “It’s purely for love of the game.”

What makes the series special is the level of trust on both sides. Restaurants trust that Eat The Boot can bring in a crowd. Diners trust that the food will be worth it even without knowing a single detail. That trust has paid off again and again, with dinners selling out and guests leaving having tried dishes they never would have ordered on their own.

It started slow, but after a few successful nights, a core group of regulars emerged people who show up excited, open minded, and ready to eat whatever hits the table.

The blind dinners have also become a place for connection. Foodies meet, conversations flow, and the shared experience of going in blind turns strangers into familiar faces. One Eat The Boot member, Joey, even got engaged at a blind dinner a moment that reflects how meaningful these nights have become beyond just the food.

Eat The Boot hosts only six blind dinners a year five this year and demand has grown so much that 2026 is already fully booked, with restaurants already lining up for 2027.

At a time when diners are often driven by trends and algorithms, Eat The Boot’s Blind Dinner Series is a reminder that some of the best meals happen when you stop overthinking it, trust the people cooking your food, and just take the seat.

For restaurants, it’s a chance to fully showcase what they can do.
For diners, it’s a leap of faith that keeps paying off.