WEST LEBANON — About 20 gourmet cooking aficionados hustled into the community room at the Kilton Library Friday night clutching crock pots, platters and dishes.

The group, organized as the “Lebanon Gourmet Cooking Meetup” on the social media website “Meetup,” gathers once every month for a potluck feast that highlights a different cultural cuisine each time. German cuisine was the month of April’s theme, which meant that the three folding tables used to hold the spread of food were soon covered with potato salads, red cabbage, sausages and deviled eggs with Bavarian Obazda — a dip made with soft cheeses and sweet paprika powder.

Before the feast could get underway, the group’s founder, Lisa Green, had each member gather next to their dish and explain a little bit about its origin and why they chose to make it.

Green and her son, Patrick, brought Käsespätzle, which she explained was sort of like the German macaroni & cheese, but with egg noodles and a hefty piling of fried onions; Patrick had fallen in love with the dish when they visited the country on a family trip.

Green began the group in 2016 after moving from Washington to Lebanon, she said. She missed the sheer amount of different cuisine options she had in the nation’s capitol and wanted a taste of that variety again.

“I just wanted more flavors and I love to cook,” Green said. “I said I’m sure there’s a lot of people like me (in the Upper Valley).”

The are nearly 700 registered members, but Green said each monthly potluck this past year has averaged around 18-20 people. Pre-COVID, she said around 30-50 people might show up for the more popular cuisines. Italian food always garners the most participants, she said.

The group typically meets on the third Friday of every month, though that can change depending on the library’s accommodations. Anyone and everyone is welcome, with no expectations regarding culinary arts skills.

Green said the group will often get people who grew up with the cuisine being showcased during that month’s potluck who are just excited to share and show off their favorites.

“One time we had a Russian lady who came in with her kids and — oh my god — she practically had like a dozen dishes because she just wanted to show off her home cuisine,” Green said. “She brought caviar, she really went all out. And so when it was the Romanians’ turn — they went all out, too.”

After each group member shared a few details about their dish, the feast began. Clusters of people with plates stacked with sausages, pickled cabbage and strudel huddled together in different sections of the seating area, eating and chatting about the food, past and future vacations and the weather.

At one table sat Aga Sypniewska, who emigrated from western Poland to the United States in the early 2000s and recently moved to Lebanon to work as an administrator in the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Sypniewska said it was her first time coming to one of the potlucks, though she’d been building up the courage to join the group for a while.

Sypniewska made and brought pork sausages with a tomato-and-curry sauce, which she explained to the group had been a Turkish recipe that made its way into Germany via Turkish immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s.

Green mentioned that the group is open to anyone who has an interest in food and wants to try a variety of different cuisines.

Lynne Chase, a group member who’s been coming to potlucks “since the beginning,” said she discovered a taste for Indian and Japanese food after joining and found the group to be very inviting and pressure-free, noting that she’s now made a few friends who she’s happy to see outside of the monthly potlucks.

That sense of community seemed to entice Sypniewska enough to come back.

“I’m a foodie, so this is kinda my thing,” she said. “I can’t wait for Polish night.”

Ray Couture can be reached at 1994rbc@gmail.com.

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