I lived in communal houses for a very long time. The best was something like this - we had communal meals four nights a week, and everyone had one cooking night. The other nights, you know you just show up and there's food. It's way easier to scale a single meal up to more people than it is to cook a smaller meal every night. And as folks cook together and rotate around, they learn and cook better. And you end up with more variety, as you experience the full gamut of idiosyncratic tastes. :)