On the last Saturday night in July, you’ll find Mike Diago staring into a pit. At the bottom of the four-foot deep hole, lined with scavenged soapstone and firebricks, a wood fire will be roaring. As it gets later, his wife, Zoraida Lopez-Diago, will come to sit with him, keeping him company as Diago shepherds the flames into red-hot burning coals.
When the stones in the pit are glowing hot, and the earth around them is warm, Diago will lower a wide pot filled halfway with water, chilies, and onions, top it with a grate, and then top the grate with hunks of meat wrapped in leaves. He’ll cover the pit with a steel lid, then bury the entire thing, cutting off oxygen and sealing in the oven until the next day, when—if all goes to plan—he’ll pull out enough falling-off-the-bone meat to feed a crowd.
Sitting along the edge of their backyard in a residential neighborhood at the foot of Mount Beacon, the traditional Mexican-style barbecue pit—or barbacoa—is the latest iteration of the couple’s quest to feed family, friends, and their growing community on the last Sunday of the month. “I always had a vision of cooking for big crowds in my backyard,” says Diago, a school social worker and food writer. “Neither of us is a part of any clubs, church, or anything like that. Our cookouts have become a regular thing that we can center community around.”
Last month, Diago slow-roasted cochinita pibil—a traditional dish from the Yucatan Peninsula where pork is marinated in ancho chilies and citrus, then wrapped in banana leaves. No matter the meat, Sunday follows a familiar rhythm. Diago cooks up a paella, or maybe Panamanian-style rice, on a wood-fired South American grill that he handbuilt in 2019. Someone will uncover the outdoor pool table and fill the zinc bathtub for impromptu soaking. Kids—the couple’s, neighbors, and friends—will migrate between the converted basement and a camper, propped up on blocks in the yard, which doubles as overflow guest space and kid clubhouse. By mid-afternoon, guests start arriving, bringing their own favorite dishes—home-cooked tomato focaccia, refried beans, birthday cupcakes, and Filipino-style desserts.
What began three years ago as an attempt to make more friends has grown into a monthly ritual filling the family’s 1,000-square-foot home and suburban yard with 40 or 50 guests (the neighbors have a standing invitation). It’s the food, Lopez-Diago explains, that people really come for. “Food is an amazing connector,” she says. “It brings so many people together, it’s the core.”
Curating while Cooking
It’s not a stretch that the couple would organize their community-building ritual around food. A photographer and environmental activist, Lopez-Diago grew up in Connecticut in a Panamanian family where the kitchen was at the center of domestic ritual. “Food is such a big part of my family. My mom is a great cook, and each of my aunts has a specialty,” explains Lopez-Diago. “My mom’s is Panamanian rice in a big pot, which she cooks slowly, turning at specific times.”
Lopez-Diago studied photography in Hartford and New York, where her work focused on capturing the voices and histories of people from the African Diaspora. She went on to document the lives of women in a Colombian prison, sharing her work in the photo essay “Girls of Colombia’s Drug Wars” in Of Note magazine and as part of her co-curated exhibit “Women Picturing Revolution.” She’s also co-curated international traveling exhibitions, including “Picturing Black Girlhood: Black Utopia,” exploring coming-of-age, open spaces, and the natural world through the lens of 85 artists. Her most recent curatorial project, “Home/Land”, explores belonging, family, and displacement through a lens of landscape and wildlife.
In 2022, Lopez-Diago’s passions for art, environment, and food converged at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, a 225-acre farm and agricultural-resiliency think tank in Cold Spring. “My job is working on a farm, fundraising for food and food systems to make sure that everyone has access to good, healthy food, and farmers are paid to grow good, locally grown, nutritious food,” she explains. “We think about food. We talk about food.”
Better with Mayonnaise
Diago spent his childhood in the Hudson Valley and traveling the world. “My father is Colombian and worked for GE, which sent him all over,” says Diago. “I split my time between living with my mom near Kinderhook and living with my dad overseas.” Diago’s travels took him to Belgium, Spain, and northern Mexico, where the cuisine and traditional cooking methods caught his attention. “I experienced all this great food,” he says. “It left me with a longing for farmhouse paella or a big cone of Belgian frites and mayonnaise.”
Diago studied social work at SUNY Albany, then took a job at Peekskill High School. His day job led him straight back to his passion for food and community when he started a cooking club for disengaged teenagers. The club was a surprising success. “I didn’t make it any more complicated than we’re going to hang out and cook,” he explains. “Every single kid came to every single session.” He began writing about the intersection of food and community in a blog exploring cross-cultural culinary experiences. That led to pieces in Eater, Saveur, the Bittman Project, and Chronogram exploring food as the ingredient that weaves community together.
All in the Neighborhood
Twelve years ago, the couple settled into their two-bedroom, two-story cottage in Beacon. They’d met in New York City, where Lopez-Diago was attending Hunter College. Diago had a motorcycle, a Dia:Beacon membership, and a habit of cooking for crowds. “Mike was such an amazing cook,” she says. “I remember he was roasting a goat’s leg when I first met him. He really pulled me in.”
To accommodate their growing family, they’ve maximized every inch of the cottage. On the first floor, they renovated the open-concept kitchen with a dining nook for family meals, an undercounter wine fridge, and an expanded pantry, which provides ample storage for provisions. They also added built-in bookshelves along the living room wall and, as their kids grew, converted the home’s basement into a rec room.
The cottage is modest, but their community begins right outside the back door. Built over two summers beginning in 2019, the Uruguayan parilla grill was inspired by a year Diago spent with his father in Mexico. “I had dreams of grilling over wood fire with my son the way my father and I did,” says Diago. Guided by YouTube tutorials, he blocked off the cement rectangular grill and then struggled to set the concrete base. When a neighbor saw what Diago was doing, he wheeled over a cement mixer and gave Diago some tips. The barbacoa pit came from a similar combination of resourcefulness and curiosity. “I sourced the stone from an antique wall that the owner wanted off her property,” he says. Diago kept the displaced soil from both projects and turned it into a raised bed garden shared with another neighbor.
Table for 50
The monthly cookouts began in 2023, inspired by Diago’s extended family. “We’d just come from a trip to Colombia, where we visited some of my uncles in this little town where they grew up,” says Diago. “I remembered visiting when I was little. There were always kids around, people stopping by, and there was always dancing. There were so many impromptu get-togethers. I just think that’s so healthy. We wanted to make something that approximates that.”
The couple has become so committed to their regular end-of-the-month gatherings that they even plan their travel around it. “After doing it consistently for three years now, it’s just become ingrained in people,” says Lopez-Diago. “Okay, last Sunday of the month, it’s time for the barbecue cookout at the Diagos.”
The success has made the couple even consider trading in their two-bedroom home for something a bit bigger—but only momentarily. “We don’t have a lot of space, but we have not been shy about having a crowd in here for a cookout,” says Diago. “I think the close quarters almost work better. There’s a little bit more like kinetic energy when people are close like that—there’s not a lot of empty space.”
This article appears in July 2026.
