On a recent Cultural Dinner Night at Zoe's Café, an Eritrean mother stood in the kitchen preparing a meal from home. She seasoned the dishes she grew up eating and watched as strangers filled the dining room, waiting to try food many had never tasted before.
For one evening, a piece of home existed right here in Greeley.
That's the surface of what happens at Zoe's on a Cultural Dinner Night. Underneath it is something the people behind it talk about less as a program and more as an invitation.
What started years ago as a free monthly meal for college students—an informal way for Zoe's and the campus ministry at Christ Community Church to build relationships with students—has grown into a gathering unlike anything else in Greeley. Between September 2024 and April 2026, Zoe's Café and Sunrise Community Health's Immigrant and Refugee Center of Northern Colorado hosted 11 Cultural Dinner Nights, serving more than 1,200 meals from 10 chefs representing eight cultures: Somali, Eritrean, Haitian, Rohingya, Moroccan, Mexican, Indian, and Louisiana Creole.
The menus change with every dinner. One night might feature injera served alongside richly spiced Eritrean dishes. Another might introduce guests to Haitian recipes passed down through generations or family favorites from Morocco, India, or Somalia. For many attendees, it's their first encounter with these flavors. For the chefs, it's a chance to share something deeply personal.
On any given night, the dining room fills with longtime Greeley residents, UNC students, immigrant families, and curious first-time guests. Some arrive because they recognize a culture from their own background. Others come because they've never tasted the food before. By the end of the evening, conversations stretch across tables, strangers exchange stories, and many linger long after their plates are empty.
But ask Ben Fusco of Zoe's Café what the dinners are actually for, and the food isn't where he starts.
"All we want to do is set the table and tell a story and invite people to participate," he says.
For Fusco, the meal is simply the doorway. Guests arrive curious about an unfamiliar menu and often leave talking about the people behind it. He hopes they walk away having encountered a neighbor as a person first—the same way he does when he stops into a local market and fumbles through Spanish with the owner. Getting it wrong, he says, is part of what makes it real.
"We can only expose people to something they might not have been exposed to."
Many of the featured chefs are connected to Sunrise Community Health/Immigrant and Refugee Center of Northern Colorado through Georgia Coats' work in Empowerment and Advocacy. For some, stepping into Zoe's kitchen is about more than preparing a meal. It's an opportunity to share a piece of home.
For many chefs, it's the first time they've shared their culture with a room full of strangers. Coats has heard the worries firsthand: Will people like the food? Will they understand it? Watching someone take a bite often provides the answer.
"It's a way of saying we accept you," Coats says. "We like your food and your culture. You're welcome here."
That's why Coats describes the dinners as an example of "mutual hospitality"—a space where the people preparing the meal and the people enjoying it both bring something to the table.
The dinners are free and intentionally low-pressure: no tickets, no reservations, and no expectations beyond showing up hungry. Zoe's covers the cost of ingredients, with support from Christ Community Church, but the evenings are not church events, and no religious affiliation is expected of anyone who walks through the door. Guests who want to support the effort further can give directly to Sunrise Community Health/Immigrant and Refugee Center of Northern Colorado.
What began drawing 75 to 100 college students now regularly welcomes more than 120 guests a night, with the largest event—an Indian-themed evening created alongside UNC art students—drawing more than 200.
Fusco talks about it as a quiet kind of disruption—a way of gently pulling people out of their routines and assumptions, one table at a time.
He can't make anyone show up generous or open-handed. But he can feed them, set the table, and let the rest happen on its own.
In a community where people often travel hundreds or thousands of miles searching for new experiences, Cultural Dinner Night offers something unexpected: the opportunity to discover another corner of the world without leaving Greeley.
Not through a travel brochure or a restaurant menu, but across a table from the person who calls that place home.
For those willing to pull up a chair, Cultural Dinner Night offers something increasingly rare: the chance to discover that a neighbor's story might be the most interesting thing on the menu.
Pull Up a Chair
Curious to experience a Cultural Dinner Night for yourself? The final dinner of the semester takes place November 5 at Zoe's Café. Guests are welcome to enjoy an evening of food, conversation, and cultural exchange at no cost.
To learn more or support Sunrise Community Health's Immigrant and Refugee Center of Northern Colorado, visit:
"All we want to do is set the table and tell a story and invite people to participate." - Ben Fusco