Ms. Post Sends (Has) Regrets
December 2003
Everyone will be here in two hours. Whose idea was this anyway? Surely not mine. As a party animal, I fit somewhere between a desert lizard and a night worm. But now I recall that febrile moment when I thought a dinner party would be a good way to stretch the social skills of an only child. A thread of sweat stitches my chiffon blouse to my backbone.
Have we lost the art of dinner parties, along with letter-writing and afternoon tea? Or perhaps they still happen, but only in Parisian flats -- where people dressed in black discuss the decline of post-modernism. Dinner parties seem to run counter to our modern neurotic need for self-reliance: we live in ever more isolating suburbs, drive cars that allow us to avoid greeting each other on the street, and communicate on the internet. I'm even loath to "bother" my neighbours by asking them to take in the mail when we go away. So it's surprising that we accept a dinner invitation that will leave us in someone's social debt.
Every month, it seems, I read some gleefully grim article on The Death of the Dinner Party that calls them démodé, replaced by the more democratic potluck gathering. But if the recent surge in sales of fine china, table linen and candlesticks is any indication, reports of its death are premature. Surely not all of this is stored in the cupboard to wait a fiftieth wedding anniversary? Even increased house sales augur well for the dinner party: the third "C" of home ownership, after comfort and convenience, is conspicuous consumption -- which requires inviting people over. Plus, food is the new entertainment. Celebrity chefs now have their own books and television shows: you can watch Emeril, then be Emeril, with your own hand-picked home audience.
Picking an audience, however, is no simple cattle call. The first way I offend Emily Post is by inviting people months in advance - and worse, giving them a wide choice of dates. Ms. Post says this doesn't allow them an easy way out if they just don't want to join you for dinner. However, this pleases a Type-A control freak like me - ingrates should have to work at getting out of it. She also advises against sending invitations too close to the date, or guests will suspect that they're just fill-ins for last-minute drop-outs. Guilty again -- but no worse than the nineteenth-century custom of Paris. A category of young men called "fourteenths" would ready themselves between five and nine o'clock each evening in case they were called upon to fill in for a late cancellation. (Today, fourteenths are called divorcés.)
My real assault on decorum, though, is that I don't personally deliver hand-written invitations. Ms. Post believes that investing significant time, effort and cost honours the guests. But I figure that after dropping my son off at school, working full-time, taking my son to gymnastics after school, working out, picking up the drycleaning, putting plant food in the dead fern's pot, reading the papers, shopping for a new air filter and defrosting dinner, it's an achievement to send out e-mail invites at 10 pm -- with dangling modifiers.
Life's already busy, so why even host dinner parties? Well, hospitality is one of life's greatest pleasures: it gathers us together to celebrate special occasions and brightens otherwise ordinary evenings. The risk, though, is that dinner parties put your personal life on display. Your guests can see whether you have taste (home décor), culture (art, books), standards (housekeeping), connections (family photos) and personality defects (lick-a-maid stick collection). This is why evil guests can trash your reputation - they have so much material to work with. Maybe that's why I'm feverishly combing the rug fringes with my fingernails right now - just after throwing the People magazine into the cupboard and leaving Anna Karenina bookmarked on the side table. ("Oh, so that's where I left my book!") Even parenting skills are up for review -- our three-year-old now knows when to swoop in for a hors d'oeuvre and run out with it between his teeth, skipping the tiresome introductions.
But on the flip slide, personal revelation and vulnerability allows hosts and guests to take their friendship to a deeper level. While restaurant tables can usually be pushed together to accommodate a throng, only a small number of people can sit down at most dining room tables. This exclusive feeling gives the guests a sense of being chosen, of entering an inner sanctum of friendship. In response, the host feels more responsible for the guests' happiness during the evening - whereas you can always blame the restaurant for a bad experience when dining out.
The doorbell chimes, and I assume the posture of Casual Elegance as I slouch toward the door. Skip that, I think, straightening up to Confident Simplicity. I'm also mentally flipping through the chapter entitled "The Good Host" to remember how many times to let the doorbell ring before answering so as not to appear more eager than a golden retriever.
Couple by couple they arrive, and our Scottish, Latin American and French backgrounds bump up against each other as we do the pigeon air-kiss dance, unsure of whether to shake hands, kiss, kiss one cheek, or both. Tonight's guests also come from different generations and work in different fields: Georgina and John are in their thirties and work in high tech; Ted is a lawyer and his wife Janet a teacher, both in their early fifties; Thérèse works for Revenue Canada and Jack is in real estate - I'm guessing they're forty-something.
"Here you go," Georgina says, thrusting a potted geranium into my husband Andrew's arms. Then she bear-hugs him, nearly flattening the plant to a corsage against his jacket. Ted tentatively hands over a bottle of Australian shiraz to me, knowing that I write about wine. "You have nothing to worry about as long as you bought an expensive label," I reassure him, winking. Thérèse and Jack arrive last, and without a hostess gift - I'm relieved that I've been able to put the others away before they arrive.
Traditionally, the host gift was part payment and part homage, but the debt wasn't fully repaid until the guest reciprocated. Flowers, chocolates, cheese, preserves, potted plants, coffee-table books, household gifts and bath products are all good ideas. (How do you think Crabtree & Evelyn stays in business?) What matters is the symbolic recognition of the time, effort and expense your hosts have already invested in the evening. Relax: you couldn't possibly do worse than the grandfather of the late novelist Kingsley Amis, who, he recalls, once gave his host a bottle of HP sauce.
Andrew takes the guests who haven't been to our home before on the Home Toy Tour, showing them the features of which he is proudest, such as the wine cellar. I start medicating those who remain behind with champagne. In France, the traditional aperitif was the highly alcoholic vermouth, which means "man courage" -- presumably strengthening one for the evening ahead. Champagne is a better aperitif, though. It stimulates the appetite, its lower alcohol content reduces the risk of guests breaking out into spontaneous karaoke before dinner is finished, and it's a drink few hosts think to serve except for special occasions, so it adds a celebratory note to the evening. People can't help toasting each other's health and happiness.
"Did you take these shots?" I hear Jack ask Andrew downstairs, as they look at our African safari pictures. Context influences conversation. From our trip, they jump to travelling with kids and the African-American exhibit at the art gallery. With no script, dinner party conversation can be more unpredictably entertaining than theatre. The plot thickens tonight when Ted goes on about sports being a waste of time to John, who's coach of his son's little league baseball team. At another dinner party, my husband, a high tech invester, used the acronym VC while discussing the economy. Another guest, who works for a social services agency, asked "Viet Cong?" "No," my husband replied, "venture capital."
In fact, the best gatherings are ones where you only know the host. It's much safer inviting people who know one another, but it's strangeness and difference that ignite the brightest conversational fires. As the nineteenth-century English dramatist W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan) once observed, "It's not so much what's on the table as what's on the chairs." At the most vibrant gatherings you can spot the fool, straight man, flirt, voice of maturity, iconoclast, and so on. In high school I went to chemistry class mostly to see what I could "accidentally" blow up. Now I'm doing it socially, trying to detonate conversations with explosive personality combinations. "People on their best behaviour are rarely at their best," novelist Alan Bennett noted. Besides, peace can usually be restored with more port.
Restaurants discussions have a different flow. All too often, they centre on how difficult it was to find parking, the 300 percent mark-up on the wines, the cold soup, the crusty waiter, whether the person against the wall has enough room - all of which set the tone for other stressful topics such as work, the stock market and global warming. Sharing a meal in a restaurant means interruptions from menus, questions from waiters who don't know your preferences, and long silences as everyone wonders what to order, how the dishes are prepared, and which ones have allergy-inducing ingredients. ("Come back to me last.")
All this can be settled in advance of a private dinner party. And when the conversation is flowing, you don't need to strain your voice over music that's playing too loudly and that's not to your taste. You won't feel compelled to hurry so that the next seating can come in; and you can even eat in your sock feet - a sensation of freedom you rarely experience with fine cuisine. The best part - for the guests, at least - is that there's no bill at the end, which makes the evening less transactional.
Twenty-four canapés later, it's time to move to the table. "Sit where you like," I invite the guests. "As long as it's not beside your partner - you can analyze the evening on the way home in the car together." The second dance of indecision plays out, then everyone sits. Hosts in ancient Rome avoided this awkwardness by inviting "parasites" - people not wealthy enough to reciprocate the dinner. They were seated in the least desirable places (such as a stool rather than a couch), ate the most meagre food, took the butt of jokes and were expected to flatter the host. Of course, today we wouldn't dream of designating parasites -- they tend to designate themselves.
For those of us who aren't parasites, however, accepting a dinner invitation means that we tacitly agree to reciprocate the hospitality. Throughout history, hosts have tried to outdo each other with lavish parties in order to make their guests indebted to them. (What's the good of money if you can't wave it under people's noses?) But today, being lavish is a form of social isolation: your guests may be so intimidated that they feel they can't possibly invite you over to their own humble homes. This is a sad loss for hospitality, which is embodied more in the gesture than in the execution.
Now, as each course arrives at the table, murmurs of appreciation escape from the guests like wisps of steam, entwining with those curling off the food. We start with pan-seared Mariposa foie gras with figs marinated in port and apricots, drizzled with port. I open an Inniskillin riesling icewine, a sweet wine that softens the saltiness of the foie gras but has a wonderful acidic backbone. The second course -- roasted loin of Ile Vert lamb with black trumpet mushroom crust - is complemented by a Chambolle-Musigny, a pinot noir from Burgundy, which has an earthy quality that some affectionately refer to as barnyard by-product. Roquefort trifle with pear relish and walnut dacquoise is paired with a 1966 Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou and followed by a palate cleanser of champagne and red grapefruit sorbet. The Valrhona bittersweet chocolate tart with creme fraiche and blood oranges slides down easily with a Bava mosacato d'asti. Entertaining at home means great wine as well as great food. You can open those special bottles you've been holding on to for too long - and that you would rarely find in a restaurant. There is no more luxurious feeling than opening your best wine with friends - a rare opportunity to get magnanimously tipsy.
Generals lead with the sword, philosophers with the pen, and dinner party hosts with the fork. The guests eye Andrew and me to know when to dig in, and we do so immediately and with relish. Food is the only entertainment we truly consume, despite what diehard thespians would have us believe. Unlike attending the theatre, ballet or opera, eating is something we need to do - but when we infuse an animal need with camaraderie and creativity, we move from sustenance to cuisine. It becomes part of us, and we turn it into blood, bone and gesture, as Rilke would say. It reminds us of how fleeting life is -- no record of the food, wine or conversation is left, only memory.
Food also helps celebrate the seasons, making us aware of nature's gifts. Be forewarned, though: mastering seasonal menus can metastasize into a manic-thematic, Martha-sized obsession. The table centrepiece becomes a five-foot harvest horn filled with plastic produce, or eight blinking-nosed reindeer chasing each other around a candelabra.
Now, after telling you about the food, I wish I could also tell you that I lovingly julienned the carrots myself and sautéed the lamb shank to perfection. But, as with other domestic skills, I outsourced. Julie Krawchuk, a freelance chef, prepares the most extraordinary meals in our own kitchen. And before you condemn me as a less-than-authentic host, let me say that I like to spend time with my guests rather than in the kitchen, where I can only catch snippets of conversation as I unplug the smoke-alarm battery. It's enough work to run the scheduling software required to coordinate eight professional calendars and arrange this evening. And let's face it: hiring a chef (though more expensive) is no worse than subcontracting your meal to your friends, in the guise of potluck. At the end of the meal we get to chat with Julie, who gives us details about how she prepared the dishes.
After tea, coffee, and more port, each couple makes their excuses and leaves. The next day, I wake up still radiant with generousity. Over the morning papers, Andrew and I chat about how John reacted to Ted's diatribe, wonder who left the cell phone in the bathroom and contemplate when we'll do the next one. It seems the night worm has found pleasure in coming to the surface; the desert lizard has found comfort in the sheltering shade of friends.
HOST TIPS
" Invite six to eight guests. This number works well in terms of the group dynamic: any more and you don't get to chat with everyone; any fewer and there are fewer viewpoints in the conversation. Plus, the logistics of preparing dishes for that size of group is more manageable than for ten to twelve, which is the breaking point at which you need more than one person preparing it.
" When you send out the invitations, ask guests to let you know about food allergies and preferences and religious and other dietary restrictions.
" Let people off the hook - many guests feel an obligation to stay late in order to "pay" in conversation the debt they feel for the evening. In your invitation, let them know what time their babysitter can expect to go home. Of course, you should also be prepared for those night owls who want to hang on later.
" Check your oven the day before the event. We once had a sprocket thingie blow a gasket in the oven two hours before everyone arrived. The fix was just in time, but it took me all evening -- and a lot of port -- to recover.
" Ignore Martha and Emily. You don't need hand-embossed place cards, matching plates, or monogrammed napkins. Focus on what's important - ensuring your guests have a good time, and that the meal is well prepared.
" Start early - invite guests for 6 pm rather than 7 or 8 pm: a leisurely pace sets a relaxed tone. You'll need time for hors d'ouevres, three courses, and dessert, followed by tea, coffee and liqueurs afterwards.
" Don't wait for a late guest. It's not fair to the other guests and may ruin the meal. Late arrivals can join the table when they get there, and they may feel less stress because they didn't hold up the meal.
" Introduce the guests to each other - not only with their names, but also with their occupations and any interests you know they share to jump-start conversation. Take responsibility for flagging conversation during the evening (though short silences are perfectly natural). Politely cut off the drone or dominant talker and draw quieter guests into the conversation without putting them on the spot.
" Encourage the best conversationalists to sit near the table ends, with quieter people in the center. This will balance the conversational ebbs and flows, and make the quiet folks feel included even if they say little.
" Start with an aperitif - offer a choice of wine, beer, soft drink, sparkling or spring water. Not everyone likes the same drink. Similarly, don't force people to drink wine during the dinner -- even though it seem de rigueur for a sophisticated dinner party.
" Keep the hors d'ouevres small, and limit them to two or three per guest - you don't want them stuffed with shrimp canapés by the time they sit down at the table. Similarly, keep each course modest in size. And don't try for more than three courses plus dessert.
" If guests haven't been to your home before, point out where the washroom is and let them know they can visit it whenever they like during the evening. You don't want them gripping Maslow's biological rungs while you're discussing issues of self-actualization.
" Ensure the lighting is adequate to see the meal and the other guests. Candlelight is romantic, but you don't want people feeling as though they're talking to disembodied night spirits. For this reason, keep centrepieces and flowers low enough to see over them. Scented candles may interfere with the aromas of the food and wine.
" Keep refilling the water glasses throughout the meal. Drinking any type of alcohol is dehydrating, as a responsible host, you don't want your guests having to quench their thirst with only alcohol. Offer sparkling or still water. Similarly, keep the bread basket stocked - guests shouldn't have to ask for refills of either.
" If you're doing the cooking yourself, choose dishes you can make ahead that need only to be heated and served. Cold entrées, such as salads, cold soups and smoked salmon, also minimize your time in the kitchen.
" Use fresh seasonal ingredients. For the sake of variety, avoid repeating ingredients throughout the meal. If you wish to economize but still appeal broadly to all palates, try pasta dishes with flavourful sauces and fresh vegetables rather than meat.
" Consider buying extra sets of silverware, dishware and glassware, rather than scrambling to wash everything between courses. Use cloth napkins that adequately cover the diners' laps - paper is for picnics. It's worth the investment if you plan to host more dinner parties.
" Keep the stain remover handy. Someone is sure to spill wine or a sauce on your tablecloth or on someone else.
GUEST TIPS
" Respond to an invitation within a day if possible, a few days at the most. Your host is likely trying to coordinate many schedules, including the other guests', the caterer's and her own. If you would have liked to join the dinner but can't due to another commitment, state why you can't make it. Otherwise, a polite no without explanation is a good signal of not wanting to be invited again.
" Let your host know of any dietary restrictions well in advance of the dinner - announcing your aversion to beef at the table isn't fair.
" If you need to cancel, call your host at the first opportunity you can, apologize and explain why. Send flowers the next day.
" Treat your hosts as you'd like to be treated. Arrive on time, be gracious, contribute to the conversation without being adversarial and don't get completely sozzled.
" Don't arrive too early - the host may still be completing last-minute preparations. Ten minutes before or after the stated time is acceptable.
" If you take wine, don't expect it to be opened immediately. The host may have planned the wines to match the dishes and may already have decanted several to breathe. For casual meals, a $10-$15 bottle is fine; but for serious dinners $25- plus is more appropriate - and please, no homemade stuff.
" Don't wear strong perfume or cologne - it interferes with the enjoyment of the food and wine, and some other guests may have sensitivities or allergies.
" Make an effort to introduce yourself and converse with other guests, especially if your host is preoccupied with dinner.
" Try not to focus only on work-related topics, even if you share the same field as another guest. This excludes others at the table. And frankly, work is something most people would rather forget while socializing.
" Don't walk into the kitchen unless you're invited - even to take in dirty dishes. The host may not want you to see the mess and preparation going on behind the scenes.
" Do send a thank you afterwards - whether by phone, e-mail or a handwritten card (the latter is often most appreciated, since it requires the most effort and time). Follow-up gifts and flowers are also a nice touch of appreciation for a truly special evening. (That's the traditional gesture after a Parisian dinner.) Your bouquet will also arrive at a time when your host doesn't have to abandon the guests to put them in water.
Within six months of dining at their house, invite your hosts either to dine at your house or, if you'd prefer not to cook, take them out to a restaurant. Don't worry about matching their meal - it is the spirit of reciprocation that counts.
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Copyright © 2003 by Natalie MacLean. All rights reserved. Please ask permission of the author before copying or using this material.
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