The vanishing dinner party
“Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties?” Nigel Slater
Last night we had a dinner party. I really enjoy them, but we haven't done it much in recent years. And it was great. Just six of us - two lots of friends who hadn't met each other before, but who we thought would get on - and they did. And us of course. During the evening David was heard to say of our recent holiday meals that it was like having a dinner party every night - which, I hasten to add, he saw as a good thing not a bad one. And indeed it was - and on holiday you have a shared breakfast and lunch too. The picture above is one dinner from a previous holiday in an amazing house in the heart of Beaucaire - a puzzlingly little visited town on the Rhone in the south of France. Prior to this week our little group of friends had not previously met and I have to confess during the week there were a couple of awkward moments but mostly everyone got on amazingly well and dinner each evening, whether in or out was a highlight of the day. Below are a few more of these occasions - glorious locations, good company, good food - what more can you want out of life really?
In fact we enjoyed them all so much that we vowed to go back to throwing more dinner parties on our return. Last night was our first effort. And it got me to thinking how we had got out of the habit, why we had got out of the habit and why our children's generation does not seem to do dinner parties.
When I started looking for inspirational quotes, pictures and ideas for this post I found that one side of the debate, if you can call it that, about the death of the dinner party is really very disparaging and scoffs at the whole idea. Like Nigel Slater's quote at the top of the page - I don't have the context so I don't really know what he went on to say but it does express the attitude that says that dinner parties are self-indulgent and potentially embarrassing. As here:
"experience has taught me that the dinner party is usually just a thinly veiled opportunity to show off - whether that’s a new house, a new partner or a new recipe. ... But the stress and expense of buying the food, cooking the food, dealing with everyone’s complex food requirements and then clearing the whole lot up afterwards just seemed like maximum effort for minimum return." Huff Post
But I do feel that this critique rather misses the point. First you need to define dinner party. I think the kind of dinner party that they are talking about is a formal affair to which a whole lot of incompatible people one feels one is obliged to entertain are invited. This is the definition that provokes criticism. But there are also informal gatherings of friends over a meal - they are parties and it's dinner - so dinner parties!
"for me at least, the informal dinner at home will always win over the dinner party. The best things (clothes, flower arrangements, dinners, etc.) are invariably those that are the most relaxed. Those have an impromptu, unconsidered feel to them. Food which, like us, feels comfortable in its own skin." Nigel Slater
So when does an informal gathering become a dinner party? An informal, hopefully relaxed gathering might also need some planning - but then maybe not. Maybe I should be more relaxed about it all - still you have to invite the friends in the first place.
I guess, looking back on my lifetime of dinner party hosting, we did do a few business related dinner parties back in the seventies and eighties, which might have been considered formal - not in terms of silver and flowers, etc., but certainly in terms of planning. My husband was a salesman and later a sales manager with a computer company and he often struck up friendly relationships with some of his customers - indeed some are still friends. So they were invited to dinner with a mix of our friends and acquaintances with whom we thought they would get on. But they really weren't formal affairs like the one above. I hope not anyway.
I do like to cook and various people say I do it well, but I hope I'm not showing off by throwing dinner parties. Is it showing off if you want to share something you do well? I suppose it is. But it's Ok for an artist to show off their art, or a musician to show off their talent. So why not a cook? A dinner party is an opportunity to cook something different from the usual fare you serve up to your husband every day. And yes, I commit the cardinal sin at dinner parties and most usually cook something I have never cooked before. I have had occasional disasters but not many. It seems to me that the basic thing that anyone who wants to cook needs, is to have the right recipe books. If you have the right recipe and you follow it then anyone can cook. By 'right recipe' I mean from someone who writes recipes that are simple but interesting and clear. I used to cook rather more complicated food I confess, but these days I look for something that requires minimal effort. And as for plating - can't do that - I'm a disaster at making food look good, so I tend to put it all in big bowls or on big plates and let everyone help themselves. Then they can take as much or as little as they like.
But I'm digressing. Back in the 60s after university we would regularly meet with our friends in London over a meal at one of our houses - well flats - we mostly lived in flats - and being England they were small - but I think we probably all had a table of some kind at which to eat, even if we did not have much of a kitchen. Occasionally we would meet with them in restaurants but (a) we didn't have a lot of money so could not afford this and (b) there just weren't the same number of choices that there are nowadays. These 'dinner parties' were fun affairs and kept our friendships alive and well. You can socialise much better over a meal and a glass of, in those days, very cheap and probably awful wine, than over the phone or by mail. If you want friendships to continue then you must maintain physical contact (however infrequent) and a meal is an ideal way of doing it. I guess back then Elizabeth David was big - and Robert Carrier too - and yes we made things like chicken paprika. But it was fun.
Then we came to Australia and the dinner party became a really good way of consolidating new friendships - for we knew no-one when we arrived here. Initially they were work colleagues, then there were neighbours, parents of our children's friends, book groupers and film society colleagues before we moved on to those more formal affairs with David's customers. I'm ashamed to say that I kept a little book of what I had served people and who had been to dinner with who - well I didn't want to serve them the same food twice because I did have a few favourites that I liked to serve. And we threw a lot of dinner parties. All those new friends were only spoken to casually at work, at the school gates, over the fence - a dinner party was an opportunity to get to know them better. And some of them were Aussie barbecues and parties as well of course. All centred on food though - and the quality of the wine was much improved. We did a lot of this - and so did they. Everybody seemed to.
"We have friends for dinner but it never feels like a dinner party, it feels like having mates over essentially to eat some food with and get a bit pissed.” James Ramsden
Nowadays we hardly seem to do it at all. I'm not sure why. Maybe once or twice a year. It can be stressful - if you go overboard on the cleaning or if you don't get to bed until really late. But these things shouldn't matter - it's an opportunity to give the house a good clean, experiment a little with cooking and have a lie in in the morning. We are retired after all and don't have to get up and go to work the next day - or deal with little children. And nowadays we have a dishwasher which takes care of a lot of the washing up, though not all it has to be said.
And it's not just us. Our children's generation never seem to do it all. I think there are a number of reasons for this. First of all there are so many relatively cheap options with respect to eating out these days that they seem to prefer to go out and meet up rather than stay in. I wonder why though? It's inevitably more expensive, your available time is limited and dictated by the rate at which the restaurant serves its food, and they tend to be noisy places and so it is often much harder to have a decent conversation. And you have to get there and back too. Maybe it feels more special. Then there are the problems of baby-sitting in the years of young children. In our day there were baby-sitting clubs. No more. These days I'm guessing you would need police clearance or something to baby-sit for a relative stranger - which is what we did. Baby-sitters are much more expensive these days, because I guess they too need clearance. There's always the grandparents though - and they do seem to be able to go out to restaurants so perhaps this is a red herring. I also saw a statement that they actually don't have anywhere in their homes to entertain people. Open plan layouts and/or tiny flats make it impossible to entertain. Believe me, some of us in London had tiny flats but we still managed somehow to have a dining table, however small. Personally I think it's more a modern culture of eating takeaway, sitting on a couch in front of the television. And let's face it, if that's what you like to do with your friends then that's just as good a way of catching up as sitting down at a table for a 'proper' meal. And takeaway doesn't have to be pizza these days - there are a whole lot of options on that front.
Then there's the plethora of cooking programs on the television - many of which feature people competing to produce the most complicated and difficult food. Enough to put anyone off trying - though Jamie, Nigella and others do try to make it look simple.
So is the dinner party dead? I confess I was getting a bit depressed about it as I read a few articles on the subject. It seems that in spite of all the hype you get all the time about the pleasures of sharing food, from those TV cooks and the magazines, people just aren't entertaining at home it seems. At least according to some. But really it isn't that hard. Finally I found a lovely article in the Guardian by Rachel Cooke which was more positive and practical. Here is some of what she said.
"The dinner party isn’t dead, even if no one calls it that any more, thank God, and throwing one is perfectly straightforward. First, think of some people you’d like to see, and who might like to see each other. Then email them to set a date. After this, ponder what you can make for them to eat: something delicious but not terribly effortful. Get some wine in. Iron a few napkins if you must. (I am great believer in napkins.) Put a frock on if you fancy it, but if you don’t, remain in your jeans and a pair of dangly earrings. If you’re the cook, wear flat shoes. Er, that’s it. These rules also apply to high days and holidays, including Christmas. A turkey is just a big chicken, after all, and the more people there are around your table to scoff it, the better." Rachel Cooke
So if all you can cook is spaghetti bolognaise or roast chicken, then go for it. The food is not really the reason for the dinner party - the reason is to maintain friendship and have fun.
So I, at least, plan to go back to dinner parties - or lunches - or barbecues. Some sort of gathering with friends that we don't see enough of, over food and wine - lots of it. And I don't expect to be invited back - there is no obligation. I guess it's just my way of showing off.
"At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely." W. Somerset Maugham
