The Mission

​Hands Please is an invitation-based gathering celebrating the people, stories, and spirit behind hospitality. Our hope is that guests arrive as strangers and leave as collaborators, forming relationships that outlast the night and work that begins because of it.

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Washington, DC - December 7, 2025

Hands Please began in Washington, DC, where the first table was set at Causa/Amazonia and the idea proved itself in a single night. Chefs, restaurateurs, media, and hospitality leaders traveled from across the country. Industry representatives from New York, Florida, the Carolinas, the Midwest, the Gulf, and the West Coast. All stood together with no agenda beyond connection.

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We are grateful to Chef Carlos Delgado and the teams at Causa and Amazonia, whose generosity set the tone for everything that has followed, and to our Legacy Sponsors, who believed in the mission before there was a track record to point to.

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What began that evening did not end that evening. Many collaboration dinners have grown out of the relationships formed in that room. Chefs who met as strangers and went on to cook together in each other's cities. That is the measure we care about most.

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The inaugural Hands Please proved the premise: put the right people in a room, remove the pressure, and the work takes care of itself.

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More than a dinner, Hands Please is a gathering of the people shaping the future of American hospitality.