Hundreds of NYers feast together in the streets of Chelsea at Longest Table potluck party

Try reaching across this table for the salt and pepper.Hundreds of New Yorkers congregated at a city block-long table in Chelsea Sunday afternoon for the third annual “Longest Table” potluck lunch party – where foodies hailing from Chelsea to Harlem to New Jersey to Lithuania broke bread in the name of fostering community connections.“We live in this city that’s so densely populated, and it’s just easy to walk by people who are just having a ‘how’s the weather’ conversation,” said longtime Chelsea resident and event volunteer Nathaniel Hawkins.“I feel like now [with] important issues, when we need people to show up, more and more people show up,” said Hawkins, 52.The large-scale lunch affair, held on a car-free Open Street on West 21st Street between Ninth and 10th avenues, began in 2022 after the pandemic lockdown drove event co-founder Maryam Banikarim to find safe, new ways to reconnect with her Chelsea neighbors.“I passingly knew my neighbors [before], but during COVID I really got to know them because we were each other’s life lines,” Banikarim, another longtime Chelsea resident, told The Post. “There’s also this epidemic of loneliness and mental health issues,” she added.

“People have this incredible desire, particularly post-COVID to connect with each other in real life … [The Longest Table] changed my experience in the neighborhood.”A photo circulating social media of neighbors sharing a massive outdoor meal in Egypt inspired Banikarim to set up a similar outdoor dining experience, with the help of about eight volunteers.News of the event spread on neighborhood-based social media website Nextdoor — with a whopping 500 people attending the inaugural soirée.“Table captains” were designated to host tables, bring chairs and coordinate their potluck contributions — which ran the gamut from baked goods to Chinese food to Indian cuisine to a great big hero sandwich.“It’s the diversity of the city,” she sai...