I love cooking dinner for 10 people. It's exciting, it takes a week of planning, a full day or two of cooking, and the glow afterwards when everyone has gone home full and happy lasts a lifetime. I can remember the faces of my guests from every party I've ever thrown.
Dinner parties are perfect because I'm completely unsociable when it comes to regular parties - I detest smalltalk. Over dinner however, talk is deep and profound and often difficult and challenging. Friendships can be broken, or new ones made that last a lifetime.
The author has a problem with cellphones? Ask kindly for them to not be at the table, forgo the Instagram credit and make a stand. It's not going to ruin everyone's day for not having a filtered photo of your lobster this one time.
For those who don't think they can cook: it's a combination of understanding food chemistry and following instructions. Think about a favourite meal you had once and try and recreate - all good food needs is passion, the rest follows.
> I detest smalltalk. Over dinner however, talk is deep and profound and often difficult and challenging.
Smalltalk is how you get to know a little about someone so you can move on to deeper things you both want to talk about. It's really unusual to just launch into deep conversation with someone you barely know.
Agreed. I used to think small talk was superficial, but it does serve a social purpose in mixed-company. It greases the wheel and initiates people into deeper conversation.
Without it, the atmosphere gets really intense really quickly, which can be weird unless you're among old friends or people who have high emotional intelligence to start with (can't always count on that).
A lot of people hate small talk because of their success rate of small talk. “How are you doing?”, “yeah it’s good, how have you been?” “Not too bad”. “...”
There are many good opening lines, but I've found that simply asking "How's your week been?" works much better than a "How are you" because it nudges people to to tell a story.
I'd certainly like to be better at it and I do try but those first minutes a stranger while you are searching for a common topic can be gruelling. I'd rather be introduced by friends who say "you both like X" and go from there.
Remember that everyone feels a little awkward meeting new people, and the first aim of small talk, before any other consideration, is to make the other person feel at ease. It's about them, not about you. You also have to have the courage to demonstrate genuine interest in others. If you only care about the ways that person relates to your particular interests, you will come off as disingenuous.
>before any other consideration, make the other person feel at ease
What excellent advice! My go-to line has been "what's been keeping you busy lately" which is a polite form of asking what someone "does" without making them them I only care what job they have.
That is how you should always interpret the "how are you?" question. Don't just say "I'm fine" - talk about what you did today, what you're going to do tonight, or tomorrow, or in the weekend. That's usually a good jumping off point to talk about some other topics.
It's really unusual to just launch into deep conversation with someone you barely know.
It's not that unusual for me. This might be part of why people seem to have strong reactions to me, whether positive or negative. I am pretty terrible at small talk.
Me either. In my experience, being willing to be the first one to open up goes a long way in making people open up to you and establish some trust that, for example, I won't be judging people etc. But I do try to never, ever, discuss politics or religion. That's a one-way route to bad tempers.
I generally don't discuss politics. I am careful how I discuss religion. I also find that being side by side or sitting at a 90 degree angle instead of face to face reduces the sense of confrontation. It also helps if you are doing other things while talking.
I usually am only trying to make conversation. I am slow to judge and I tend to assume people do things for a reason. So I don't dump a bunch of shame and guilt on people.
I also default to talking about me rather than about other people. It gets me accused of being self centered and crap like that, but I find it to be the least worst option, vastly less problematic than talking about other people.
For someone who dislikes smalltalk, the ideal is for their conversational partner to maintain the discussion until a topic that interests them is brought up. Between two people, this is perhaps insolvent, but with a larger group, some of whom may already know each other, it is perfectly feasible to wait until you have something to say to speak.
If you're one of the hosts, it's also perfectly acceptable to say just a few words at the start and then proceed to occupy yourself with the logistics of the dinner.
Who? I tried googling the names separately and together and didn't come up with anything that appeared to be bios or whatever about people with those names.
I think what GP is saying is that he/she finds smalltalk less awkward at the dinner table compared to other settings, or maybe that less smalltalk is needed before going deeper when there's dinner involved. Which is understandable because food serves as a great icebreaker as well as a natural topic of conversation.
I have had amazing dinner parties with zero planning. Maybe it's because of different cuisine. In my case the first zero planning dinner party I went to was a nabe (hotpot) party. On the way to the friends house we all (10 of us) pitched in like $3-$4 each, we stopped at the supermarket, got a few things, go back to the friends house, dumped them in the hotpot. Yes, you need a hotpot but a burner + pot is < $20 in many parts of Asia (and in the USA too if you go to an Asian supermarket)
I've done the other kind too with more planning and a day or 2 of cooking too. Just suggesting that you can also do it without the planning and hours of cooking.
Potluck dinners are just as enjoyable. That mood of sociability still happens if everyone brings a dish, and the commentary about them can be a conversation starter. It's amazing how unforgettable such meals can be.
You can even plan the menu and make specific asks for each friend — you are on salad, you are on dessert, you are on beer, you are on wine, and the house provides the main. Simple. We’ve also tried catering and it is fine but it feels less intimate.
My mother always says 'pastry is an exact science, cooking is a liberal art'.
Cooking a meal is more about tasting, technique than the exact amount of ingredients. Pastry is a different beast, it you don't use the exact amounts or time chances are your dish will fail.
I would disagree slightly with this, one recipe I made used the reaction between the baking soda and the buttermilk to provide the "fluffyness", since I wasn't aware I didn't finish the prep fast enough to get it into the oven while it was still internally foaming, and ended up with a very short and dense cake. Had someone said, "You want to be sure to be baking before the sodium bicarbonate stops reacting." that would have clued me into the time constraint based on the chemistry.
The thing that bugs me about these commonly cited pieces of information about cooking is I have a hard time verifying them without a lot of experimentation. I took up making waffles in the morning following the common buttermilk + baking soda + baking powder recipe. One day I was kind of groggy and forgot to add baking soda; and I could not tell the difference. The whole food writing / recipe sector lost a lot of credibility for me that day.
Well the basic thing going on is "acid + base". Baking powder contains both (baking powder is baking soda + cream of tartar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_bitartrate), and starts reacting when water is added (try it).
Baking soda is a base, and reacts with buttermilk which is acidic.
It's not clear to me why some recipes contain both acid+baking soda and baking powder. Maybe they're worried that the first combination isn't sufficient?
My breakfast this morning used yoghurt + baking soda ;) (бухти)
As per my answer above, you just need to know a very high level food related chemistry -- not even actual chemistry, just how different foods (plants, meats, sauces, etc) react to heat/water/cold and how they interact between them.
There have been untold number of cooks who know nothing about actual chemistry beyond "water = H2O", including tons of professional chefs all over the world. In fact any chef before like early 20th century or so wouldn't know the first thing about chemistry proper unless they've studied chemistry -- heck chemistry became a real discipline after the 18th century, but exquisite cooking has been with us for millennia.
Understanding the chemistry and physics makes it a lot easier to figure out when something is going wrong and how to fix it. This is particularly true when adjusting temperatures and cooking times.
If you haven’t before, check out PBS’s America’s Test Kitchen. Perfect blend of the chemistry/food science and some really good cooks and explanations behind tradition.
When you know there is going to be too much time between mixing baking soda and citric/lactic/whatever acid is being used, use baking powder. It has the alkaline soda and acid pre-mixed together, but does not fully activate until heat is applied.
If you learn the technique you will learn this too. But I think we are mostly in agreement here. Nothing wrong with undertanding chemistry but cooking is more than theory it's a performing arts.
Parent said "understand food chemistry", which I understand not to be the chemistry of food as it relates to molecules and chemical reaction chains, but rather something more basic: this thing can soak too much oil, this burns quickly even in moderate fire, this food gets soggy if you put in this before that, and such things.
"Food chemistry" generally means the chemical reactions in food -- the actions of acids and bases, fats, gluten, starch and so on.
My mother studied food chemistry at college, so childhood baking generally included 20 seconds of explanation on why something I was about to do would make a mess. ("If you don't do X, the protein in won't coagulate and it will all fall apart.")
This mostly applied to baking, cooking eggs, or making a roux. The rest doesn't really matter.
> it takes a week of planning, a full day or two of cooking
not to mention the cleaning up is a good 3-4h after (or the next morning)
respect for those who can fit it in their schedule. i know i have no excuse because the author of the article is a restaurateur in NY which surely means a 365-day-a-year commitment to her business. where she finds time, i don't know. i sometimes feel like i can't do it and i definitely don't work every day.
I usually manage to clean up ¾ of the mess the same night: I dump everything that will fit in the dishwasher and set it to start overnight. In the morning, I empty it, and the rest of the stuff goes in the dishwasher.
Then I put away the liqueur bottles, wipe down the table, and replace the chairs. What other mess is there, beyond routine cleaning?
It's the same as any other serious family activity. Going on a camping trip, having a big garage sale, or decorating your house for Halloween can take just as much planning and cleanup as a dinner party. If you can take day off or take advantage of a long weekend to do these things, great! If not, you probably have different priorities and that's fine too.
My wife and I's friends all have children the same age as ours and they are toddlers. Dinner parties are right out, but Sunday waffle brunch is on point. It is a fun affair with everyone including the kids. After everyone eats it becomes comically victorian. The Sober Dads and Friendly Neighbors drink coffee, BS, and supervise the kids (Out of Earshot, of course). The cocktail crowd will relax into an adult conversation as much as any dinner party without the urgency of a baby sitter or the guilt of leaving ones partner at home to enjoy an evening out. I enjoy our brunch with friends as much as any dinner party I can recall.
When I think about the reasons to pursue owning a house over an apartment, I will remember the Waffle Brunch. It sounds like such a house with a yard thing.
Resonates 100% with me. I also started doing dinner parties at a very young age. Always loved it, loved the hosting part and the discussions that unfold.
There is an art to a good dinner party. People have to feel welcome, you have to have a laid back enough attitude that they don't feel they are dining with the queen while still having enough structure that the dinner feels like it's going somewhere.
Maybe I am just lucky but I have not experienced people looking on their phones all the time at least not enough for it to be a problem.
The biggest problem these days are finding people who eat everything and like all sorts of food.
I've always struggled with dinner parties. I love them immensely, but I found that it's hard to get people to come. Just to get more than three friends in the same room can be tough. The older I get the more I find that people prefer to stay home, or go out to eat. Going to someone's home seems like extra effort
I think it’s the fear of being trapped with people you might not like and not being free to speak your mind.
In a restaurant you can leave at any point with very small excuses; you can safely blame the cuisine if you don’t like it; and it’s a large environment with distractions, where one can simply “blend out” if he wants to. At somebody’s home the attention on each other is more intense, it’s a small and quieter environment, you can’t tell the host that his lasagna is terrible or his background music is atrocious, and it feels a bit offensive to leave early.
This sort of thing is not an issue if people are close friends who can safely slag each others’ off, but in an increasingly globalised and atomised society the ratio of friends to acquaintances has decreased significantly, so gatherings probably tend to feel more formal.
You're friends are not introvert, are they? I say "Yes" more to those who seem to understand an introvert more. I say "No" more to those I don't have much in common. In my case, I say "Yes" more to invitation from techies than from sport lovers.
#3 (communal process) can be really fun and enjoyable. It depends on the people. Each time I experienced it, people were always having great time. Perfection should not be sought. Letting people add their creativity can help. It can really be a good idea. But do not force anyone not willing to participate and do not make such people feel like they are jerks.
#2 really depends on the people. It has been wrong most of the cases in my experience. People often enjoy food. Food is part of the pleasure for many people!
I enjoy good food too. Certainly depends on the people. For others, food is a tremedous point of stress. But I think all people can enjoy a dinner party, regardless of the food.
> The night's menu, to be served at midnight, consisted of scrambled eggs, sausages, biscuits, pastries, spaghetti and meatballs and chicken hash, a specialty of the Plaza and one of Capote's favorite dishes.
2. Dialog from Glengarry Glen Ross:
Ricky: Did you ever take a dump - made you feel like you'd just slept for twelve hours?
James Lingk: That I -
Ricky: Yes? [James Lingk laughs.]
James Lingk: I don't know.
Ricky: Or a piss? Great meals fade in reflection. Everything else gains. You know why? 'Cause it's only food. This shit we put on us keeps us going. It's only food. The great fucks you may have had, what do you remember about 'em?
For people in their 20s and 30s in a culture where showing up late or not at all after rsvp is acceptable it is better to invite lots of people having all the foods on the stove keeping warm or laid out family style so people can grab a plate when they arrive or are hungry. Say it starts at 7pm and expect people arriving as late as 11pm.
I've found a good way to actually figure out how many people are coming is to require people to actually write a message to say they're going. If you just hit the "going" button and don't reply saying you're actually coming, I assume you have no intention of showing up.
Also, it's incredibly rude to show up to an event 4 hours late. 30 minutes, I can understand, if you got caught up, but 4 hours is taking the piss.
I suppose it depends on the definition of dinner party. (I only skimmed TFA, so apologies if you're addressing something specific in the article.)
IMO, a dinner party doesn't have to be some stuffy affair. It's just a group of people getting together to share a meal, typically in someone's home. I often host a Sunday dinner for family and occasionally a friend or two and their families. The numbers are sometimes in the 10+ range, including kids. It's usually a pretty casual event, some food, some drinks, some nice conversations.
You might say that's just having a few people over for dinner, not a "dinner party." Maybe you're right. But I think the act of communal in-home dining, involving some family and/or friends, is very common across cultures. The WASPy "dinner party" is just one variation on that.
Yeah I get the feeling just based on the article and the comments here that people are referring more to the waspy formal dinner party and not so much the more casual / common incarnations. Obviously growing up and all that we would get together with families around the neighborhood all the time and have barbeque or whatever. As an adult I've been living apartment life, along with everyone in my social sphere, so dinner parties aren't really a thing but getting people together at a bar/restaurant is..
Dinner parties to me are just sort of a funny cultural quirk that I don't really get, I guess. Another one is how everyone else knows all the common dances at weddings. I've been to a few but not enough to, you know, get the choreography right lol.
For balance, I shall quote my favorite curmudgeon, Phillip Lopate, in his personal essay about dinner parties:
I don't expect the reader to agree with me. That's not the point. Unlike the behavior called for at a dinner party, I am not obliged, sitting at my typewriter, to help procure consensus every moment. So I am at liberty to declare, to the friend who once told me that dinner parties were one of the only opportunities for intelligently convivial conversations to take place in this cold, fragmented city, that she is crazy. The conversation at dinner parties is of a mind-numbing caliber. No discussion of any clarifying rigor—be it political, spiritual, artistic, or financial—can take place in a context where fervent conviction of any kind is frowned upon, and the desire to follow through a sequence of ideas must give way every time to the impressionistic, breezy flitting from topic to topic. Talk must be bubbly but not penetrating. Illumination would only slow the flow. Some hit-and-run remark may accidentally jog an idea loose, but in such cases it is better to scribble a few words down on the napkin for later than attempt to "think" at a dinner party.
What do people talk about at such gatherings? The latest movies, the priciness of things, word processors, restaurants, muggings and burglaries, private versus public schools, the fool in the White House (there have been so many fools in a row that this subject is getting tired), the undeserved reputations of certain better-known professionals in one's field, the fashions in investments, the investments in fashion. What is traded at the dinner-party table is, of course, class information. You will learn whether you are in the avant-garde or rear guard of your social class, or, preferably, right in step.
As for Serious Subjects, dinner-party guests have the latest New Yorker in-depth piece to bring up. People who ordinarily would not spare a moment worrying about the treatment of schizophrenics in mental hospitals, the fate of Great Britain in the Common Market, or the disposal of nuclear wastes suddenly find their consciences orchestrated in unison about these problems, thanks to their favorite periodical—though a month later they have forgotten all about it and are on to something new. The dinner party is a suburban form of entertainment. Its spread in our big cities represents an insidious Fifth Column suburbanization of the metropolis. In the suburbs it becomes necessary to be able to discourse knowledgeably about the heart of the city, but from the viewpoint of a day-shopper. Dinner-party chatter is the communicative equivalent of roaming around shopping malls.
[...]
The first to leave breaks the communal spell. There is a sudden rush to the coat closet, the bathroom, the bedroom, as others, under the protection of the first defector's original sin, quit the Party apologetically. The utopian dream has collapsed: left behind are a few loyalists and insomniacs, swillers of a last cognac. "Don't leave yet," begs the host, knowing what a sense of letdown, pain, and selfrecrimation awaits. Dirty dishes are, if anything, a comfort: the faucet's warm gush serves to stave off the moment of anesthetized stock-taking—Was that really necessary?—in the sobering silence that follows a dinner party.
If you like this article, the author (Gabrielle Hamilton) has a great book called Blood, Bones and Butter that I highly recommend (though it gets a bit dull at the end).
Cooking for your friends and family obviously isn't formal thing at all, but hosting a dinner party is something else. A "Dinner Party" is a specific type of event expected to have a certain theme and structure that makes it different and more formal from just having some people over for dinner. Of course it doesn't have to be super formal, but certainly more formal than having a few mates over for some food and a few beers.
I'm curious what you consider the specific attributes that are required to turn "cooking for your friends and family" into "hosting a dinner party."
IMO, they're both variations on communal in-home dining, but I can see how they fall at different ends of a spectrum. Cooking for a large family gathering doesn't feel like a "dinner party;" that's just family dinner. Whereas inviting 10 (relative) strangers to dinner feels like a dinner party.
But then there's a whole gray area in the middle where I'm not sure. For example, I cook family dinner on Sunday for 4-8 family members in the area, and I sometimes invite a neighbor family or a few friends over to join that meal. Does inviting the non-family people turn it into a dinner party?
I don't know. It kind of feels like one. A lot of people who don't know each other well (or at all) and don't normally eat together are sharing a meal, some drinks, some stories. If that's not a "dinner party", what other attributes would need to be present to turn it into a dinner party?
My dinner party pet peeve is hosts (or overly enthusiastic guests) who miss the point of bracketing the wines of the courses with an aperitif and a digestif, and instead bring out one bottle of red wine after the other until late into the night. It's in bad taste and a recipe for getting guests wasted, sick, or both.
Someone should faux take your comment seriously and insert a link about the origin and history of potatoes and how they come from South America and were first cultivated by South American indigenous peoples.
I can't imagine the luxury of living somewhere with a room large enough for a big dinner table to just sit in (and not just vanish instantly because it's the living room and everyone needs the space constantly). Author seems to suggest eight or so people around the same table. Wow. That kind of thing is the preserve of the rich or the elderly, who bought a house when they were cheap. Middle-class dinner parties in someone's house used to be quite common in the UK; now they're a rich people thing. I do know some rich people who have dining rooms; a room just for eating in. It does seem very civilised.
You can make almost any space work if you make it a priority.
As a broke college student we’d have people sitting on the floor in the living room and at random small tables or standing all over the apartment, with guests serving themselves from off the top of the stove. In tiny NYC apartments we’d pretty much do the same thing. In my current apartment in Brooklyn we have a table that can fit 6 in our living room and a kitchen big enough for one is all it takes to prepare a meal.
As an adult I’ve always made it a priority to never have a TV and always have space to hold small dinner parties.
I'm not sure what the median is, but my wife is a stay at home mom (no income), and I make around $100k. In a typical 2 income household that would average out to the two of us making $50k each.
According to some quick googling, median household income for the US as a whole is about $59k, $65k for CA, $77k for SF. So you're well above median, although I certainly wouldn't call you "the rich" (on a US scale - globally we're all rich).
Yeah, but those numbers don't have adjustments for area you live in ($100k is very different in Silicon Valley vs many places in the rural midwest), number of people in the family, etc. I think we would be closer to middle middle class. All of our neighbors are mailmen, receptionists, paramedics, non-profit fundraisers, elementary school teachers, paralegals (though, she got busted on a DUI and is out of work now), etc.
You don’t need to be rich to have a dining room in Northern England; I have, and I’m certainly no doctor, lawyer or dotcom millionaire.
It’s just that most people who had such a room (in traditional semi-detached layouts) sacrificed it when eating in front of TV became normal; might as well get rid of a room with just a table that is never used, and turn it into another bedroom, or an extended living room. I chose not to do that, not even when I lived in your typical 2up-2down terrace, because eating around a table (most days in the kitchen, sometimes in a rearranged livingroom with an extendable table for occasions) is how I grew up, and there can be no tv while eating together.
Obviously if you are in London, any space is at premium; but London is just insane like that. Normal people do have the chance, they just opt out of it.
Ooor you could just flatshare, which easily finds you a flat with two bedrooms and a living room that seats twelve. And hey, you already have another person or two there to take the table seats.
My tables are expandable - normally, it's a smallish table for 4 people, but it can be made longer to accomodate more. These tables easily fit into a standard one-bedroom flat.
You'd sure have to be keen to cook for eight in a standard one-bedroom flat kitchen.
Given that the typical one bed flat has a single room that isn't bedroom, bathroom or kitchen (although actually, many modern builds seem to be not actually have such a room - it's just a living room with a cooking area up against one wall), do you move everything else out of the room with the table in? I'd probably have to move the sofa out, and a cabinet, so I could drag the table into the middle of the room so people could sit all around it, and I certainly don't have eight chairs to put around the table. It would seem like quite a waste of space to have so many extra chairs in the flat permanently just for the occasional dinner party. Where do they go when the table is contracted into four-spaces mode? Or do you borrow some? I do know people who've borrowed furniture for a particular event.
Until just the past month I didn't have room for a dedicated dining table. My trick was to store a hollow door (yes, a closet door I carried back from Home Depot) behind my clothes in my closet. And when I had people over for board games and/or dinner, I'd pull out two saw horses from under my bed and place the door across them. Totally worked, and it even kinda looked trendy!
Chairs, of course, were assembled from various other uses around the apt, and I had a few slight, almost space-less lawn chairs if I needed extra. In my smallest apartment, I'd pull the door against the couch, so that three people could sit down. But this was obviously not ideal because they sunk much lower...
It surely depends on the size of the room. In my father's flat (50 m^2, one bedroom), there's enough room to expand the table without taking any major furniture out. The table needs to be moved to a different spot though. I haven't asked him where he gets the extra chairs from - probably some from the bedroom/kitchen, but still you need more. Also, with 8-10 people it gets crowded in the room, but that's not a problem (or - even more fun) if you're dining with people you're close with.
All of your issues would be solved by moving out of the city, or not living alone. I also live in a tiny one-bedroom, but definitely not because it's the most cost effective option.
I don't know where you live, but I guarantee you could find a large apartment or duplex or something to rent with a few friends, which would be cheaper than living alone and give you more space than you know what to do with. As an added bonus, you'd have a few reliable guests to seed your dinner parties.
Central London rental property is beyond ridiculous [1] (that's partly why I left). If you choose to live there, it's unreasonable to compare it to anywhere else -- except Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.
It is a kind of "civilised" that's increasingly hard to achieve in our squashed lives. I did actually move house a good way north in the UK simply to have more space for things including a permanent dining table. But like most things you can also make it happen under suboptimal conditions if you really want. Folding tables and chairs is one way. Back as students we would sometimes all eat together in a single-bedroom room even if that required people to sit on the floor with a plate in their lap. Another option might be a picnic in a public space (horribly weather-dependent but good fun).
At uni (in the UK) my housemates and I bought some hardboard and extended our tiny kitchen table to seat 12. Sure it was a little wobbly but with a table cloth on it you could hardly tell
My apartment in Oakland, CA is bigger than the apartment my mother-in-law grew up in in Warsaw, Poland. They have more than eight in there most holidays - a lot of it is a matter of smartly reusing space, some of it is making due with less.
Dinner parties are perfect because I'm completely unsociable when it comes to regular parties - I detest smalltalk. Over dinner however, talk is deep and profound and often difficult and challenging. Friendships can be broken, or new ones made that last a lifetime.
The author has a problem with cellphones? Ask kindly for them to not be at the table, forgo the Instagram credit and make a stand. It's not going to ruin everyone's day for not having a filtered photo of your lobster this one time.
For those who don't think they can cook: it's a combination of understanding food chemistry and following instructions. Think about a favourite meal you had once and try and recreate - all good food needs is passion, the rest follows.