How to Host a Dinner Party (3 page)

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very terrible dinner party begins with a bad decision. Since forever ago, husbands and wives have looked up from their glossy magazines or iPads or sacred scrolls and said, “Honey, we should have so-and-so over for dinner,” or “Honey, we should cook such-and-such for dinner.” I have been the guest at many overcrowded, miscast, inedible dinner parties that began with these well-intentioned impulses. And so have you.

The shame of the human race is that we can put a robot on Mars, yet we can’t figure out how to host a dinner party. But really, it’s as easy when we take it one step at a time. Start by assessing your table.

THE TABLE

 
 Don’t invite more guests than you can handle.

In a mad rush to announce their Moroccan/Thai/Star Wars–themed dinner, or as an opportunity to show off their new decanter, belt, or fiancé, too many hosts skip right over this first step. Once we’ve figured out the why of a dinner party, but before we ask whom we should invite or when, we’ve got to determine how many people we can accommodate.

Thinking of squeezing in one more invitation? Then visualize a tightly packed suitcase. Now try to find space for a bottle of wine. It might fit, but it might shatter and ruin everything.

We’ve all been at a dinner where we’re strapped into our chairs like astronauts, unable to move an inch in either direction (which is acceptable only if it’s a family holiday dinner). Or have you ever had a restaurant squeeze your party of eight into a six-person table? Remember how every time a dish arrived, the server didn’t know where to put it down, and you all had to rearrange your glasses, plates, and cutlery?

So if we’re in agreement that there is such a thing as too many people at the table, we can get realistic about defining that number. Go take a look at your table right now. Ask yourself how many people can sit at this table comfortably, with food and wine. And remember, if you’re serving family style, those big bowls are going to take up major real estate. Want to have candles on the table? That eats up more space. How about a vase of flowers in the centre? That’s a trick question. The centrepiece, whether it’s flowers, a candelabra, or a diorama, is a stupid nuisance that only gets in the way.

Now that you’ve taken a serious look at your table, gather all your chairs around it and have a sit. If your chairs have arms, you’re probably pretty cozy, like in a movie theatre. But those arms take an extra half a foot per chair and make it harder for guests to excuse themselves to go to the powder room. This is why we shop for thin, high-backed dining-room chairs. The average guest requires (and this should in no way be interpreted as canonical) about 26 in. (66 cm) of width. Though we’re not all the same size, that’s a reasonable average to follow.

The number that you’ve just determined is not elastic. This is how many guests you can invite. Want to invite more people? Get a bigger table. Can’t fit in a bigger table? Get a bigger home. Can’t afford a bigger home? Then start being reasonable. At least you have somewhere to sit. I was once asked, “Do I need a table?” Yes, you need a table.

But don’t sweat perfection at this moment. When I started hosting, I was using plywood chairs that cost $10 at IKEA. They were so flimsy that one finally snapped under the weight of a jolly guest. When those were all broken, I found some plastic folding things on Craigslist. Only when I was ready did I start shopping for nice dining-room chairs.

We don’t “need” nice things. We want them. But sometimes our insecurity about what is expected of us makes us feel that we must own certain items — not for their usefulness, but as status symbols. Nice chairs, like nice wineglasses, plates, cutlery, and candlesticks, are things we can acquire in good time.

My old table sat six, so for one hundred professional dinners, I only ever invited five guests. My new table is a big piece of reclaimed maple. It seats eight. A ninth person would limit everyone’s elbow room and the space on the table. If guests are not comfortable, they cannot have a good time.

I was tempted, when shopping for this table, to buy one a foot longer, which could have accommodated ten guests. But beyond the limit of space in my home, it forced me to confront the question: How often do I want to have ten people over? Rarely to never.

There’s nothing wrong with multiple conversations happening at once. In fact, it can be wonderful. Whether everyone is listening to one blowhard expounding or three separate discussions are occurring simultaneously, it’s exciting to see people engaged. With groups of four and eight people, it is still possible to have a single conversation. Beyond that, the dialogue becomes fragmented, often balkanized. In this type of situation, you’ll likely see people defecting from one side of the table to the other, voting with their feet on whether they want to talk about reproductive rights or the latest episode of that show with the pretty single girl who is great at her job but terrible at everything else.

However, once the head count reaches nine, it will be impossible to moderate. And a conversation is like a garden. Mostly you want to let it grow naturally. But every once in a while, you need to tie it to a stick before it reaches too far in the wrong direction. Also, once the table gets too large, there will be people at either end who don’t get to say more than hello to each other. If the event extends to more than one table, it’s no longer a dinner party. It’s a banquet.

Just because you can seat many doesn’t mean you have to. If you want a quiet, intimate evening, accept that your capacity is six. Know your limits before you start writing your invitation list.

THE DATE AND THE GUEST LIST

 
 Beware the natural desire to crowd-source a date for your party. Democracy is a nice idea for government, but it is an aggravation for hosting dinner. Emailing six friends and asking them to propose a date that works for everyone may seem like a reasonable way to begin, but it’s asking for trouble. Couple A responds right away, suggesting a date but without
cc
-ing the others. Couple B isn’t available for the next six weekends. Couple C has a private beef with Couple A and are waiting to hear if they’re coming, which is a deal-breaker.

That’s why setting the date and choosing the guests are interchangeable, depending on your agenda. Do you want to set dinner on a designated evening and then see who is available? Or are there specific people you want to have over and whose schedules you’re willing to work around?

In the date-first model, use a ranked ballot system for guests. So first you choose a date, say, three Saturdays from now. Then you contact your first pick of guests (probably a couple, probably your best friends). They can’t make the 17th? Okay, how about the 24th? Once you’ve decided on a date and your star players, you’ve got a nucleus around which you can start inviting others. With the firm date, it’s a
yes
or
no
question for the others. If they can’t make it, it’s their loss. Maybe next time. You move on down your list and still get the social credit for having extended an invitation. I advocate this over the guests-first model in which settling on a date means a dinner scheduled for two months in advance. People are busy. And that’s okay.

ON BANQUETS AND BUFFETS

A potluck does count as a dinner party, but banquets and buffets do not. A potluck is an alternate style of dinner party, in which each guest brings a dish. Other than its general horridness, there is nothing specifically wrong with a potluck. But the labour of organizing people to bring different things to avoid a collection of six bean dips is often more trouble than cooking yourself. Whether you have friends who are good cooks or bad, the democratization of labour removes the host’s ability to author the evening. We have to endure either someone’s terrible cabbage soup or the fact that he is pouting about its unpopularity.

Once we expand beyond a single table for a sit-down dinner, this is called a banquet. And while the word conjures images of regality, it detracts from the home dining experience. When I think of a banquet, it is not a seventeenth-century royal court. It is a wedding, an academic symposium, summer camp, a political trade conference, or some other situation where people are gathered, primarily not to eat, but they’ve been there long enough that they need to be either fed or shot. I think of large rooms in suburban strip malls or in the basements of downtown hotels and convention centres. I feel the sting of uncomfortable rented chairs, the gnawing irritation of being served last out of thirty tables or the guilt of being served first. And never, in any of these venues, have I witnessed anything that remotely resembled a well-cooked meal (other than when a whole pig or goat was being roasted). If you were to sneak into the kitchen, where I have worked as a catering cook, you would see plates stacked as high as the boxes in Charles Foster Kane’s warehouse. Pre-dressed with vegetables or sauces, each plate is crowned with a rubbery slab of chicken or fish scooped from a metal insert (where a pile of a hundred chicken breasts continue to steam each other) before a queue of servers grab the dishes, four at a time, to ferry them out to the wrong place settings.

As soon as you step beyond the reasonable boundary of one table, you are setting foot in this territory. One by one, you will have to compromise the types of foods you’re preparing, their efficiency and freshness, and the intimacy of the evening you’re aiming to create. You are hosting a dinner party, not a banquet.

But be careful — once guests know they are indispensible, they start throwing their weight around. They know they can request date and time changes. At the last minute they’ll suggest putting the whole thing off for two weeks. I once attended a dinner party that started at five-thirty to accommodate new parents, who then left at seven. It was a thoughtful gesture to include the first-time parents, who probably need an eight to ten month grace period of gradual reintroduction to society. But without being explained in advance, it left the rest of us wondering why we were tired and eating cake before the sun had set.

But on some occasions the guest-first method is necessary, such as a gathering of work friends, or an anniversary that demands that certain people be there, or when you need to create a relaxed setting to ask friends if they’ll donate genetic material for your test-tube baby. Just make sure that it’s the occasion that is shaping the attendance, not a fear of excluding people. That way lies madness. Spending time with people we don’t like is a hypocrisy we must endure in the workplace and among our families. But if we travel down that path in our own homes — at our own dinner tables — we are doomed.

The list of people we’d like to invite is most likely comprised of friends and their partners. But let’s spare a moment to take inventory, because there are archetypal characters that can make or break your dinner.