Food writer, personal chef, and consummate hostess Katie Sweeney who pens the entertaining blog Six Twists shares her expert advice on hosting a dinner party.
Thinking of inviting some friends over for a dinner party? After 15 years of hosting meals for friends, families, and clients -- with a few hiccups and mad successes along the way -- I've learned a thing or two. Here are my top tips for throwing a successful supper. You need something to toast, right? Giving the party a purpose will make it more fun. Birthdays and milestones are obvious reasons for a party, but really you can host a dinner for any reason you dream up.
It's Friday! It's your half-birthday! It's the season finale of Orphan Black! Viviani suggests paring these down. Create food that goes well together so you can use one plate instead of three plates. A key ingredient to any successful dinner party is preparation. Just as more food is required for a larger group, so too should you add more time for prep if you are welcoming a larger group into your home.
Little things really make the difference, for inspiration on quick update, check out these 30 Best Stylish Home Upgrades. But one type of preparation you should not do is to try and enhance the scents of the house or apartment, with scented candles, fragrance diffusers, or basic plug-in air fresheners.
The only smells guests should encounter as they enter the home should be the food you are preparing or the cocktail they have in their hand. Not only can strong scents potentially activate guests' allergies, they can compete with, and sometimes sabotage, the pleasant smells of the food itself.
This not only ensures guests don't worry about whether they've found the right place or not, it makes them feel like the party has started before they've even gotten to the door. You can vary what you use to let guests know they are in the right place, depending on the event or time of year "I might have an LED 'love' light flashing for a Valentine's gathering. For Halloween, I may have ghost wails playing as they walk up to the door," says Caroselli.
Often the first thing a guest encounters after setting foot into your home is the drink you offer them—so make sure it's a good one.
Bottled water is a must during your party and is a lovely gesture to give each guest for their drive home," says McAllister-Zaas. But to really make an impression, she suggests that the host, "create a signature drink for your party. Nothing is worse for a guest than showing up for a dinner party thinking there was going to be a long pre-dinner cocktail hour, only to realize everyone is halfway through their meals.
Make it clear in the invite how long "cocktail hour" will go, then the exact time when the meal will be served. You should have a theme , she says, and all the details of your party — every course of the meal, the decor, the cutlery — must match the theme. She also advises that if your apartment is too tiny, you should just rent another apartment for a day, Post told Elle Decor.
Dinner parties were once a way to show off your wealth and social status, but millennials hit by the Great Recession have neither. That means formal dinners served on china with a roast and martinis have been replaced by having friends over to your apartment for chili night and White Claws. Nikki Rappaport, a year-old marketer in DC, agrees. Unfussy food, unfussy vibes, and the permission to be imperfect. No matter where you live, no matter how big your kitchen is, no matter your budget, you can definitely invite people into your home and share food with them.
Nothing should prevent you from doing that. Dining sets gradually became smaller, as wealthy folks favored more intimate gatherings and as shifts in economics meant that the middling classes could also afford a home with a small room rather than a great hall dedicated to eating.
By the mid-century period, that era of housewives throwing glamorous dinner parties, the precedent had long been established. All of this is to say that as the dinner party evolved over modern history, the ability to throw a dinner party became a signifier of class status. Hosting a dinner party required having a home big enough to host gatherings and comfortably seat people at a dinner table, the money to supply guests with several courses of food and alcohol, the time to prepare elaborate meals, and the disposable income to furnish your home with sets of formal dinnerware, stemware, candles, table decor, and all the other trappings of formal dinner parties.
Having a dinner party was a way to show off your extensive social connections, your wealth, your place in society. It was a sign of having good taste — which is ultimately all about class anxiety. Maybe your pre-dinner party prep has reminded you of those skis you never use. We make it easy to store your stuff by supplying the storage bins, the heavy lifting, and the driving.
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