Have more dinner parties this year
The country might be going to hell, so let's eat together
It’s 2025, and everyone’s terribly lonely and on high alert. I believe the most joyful and simple solution—to our loneliness, to our roiling fears, to our information overload—is to have people come over and eat with us.
One of my favorite traditions is a decade-long commitment to monthly dinner parties with friends. We take turns hosting each other. We dress up. We make cocktails and find the right playlists. The cooks take turns outdoing each other with lavish dishes and desserts. We cap the night with amaro in tiny vintage crystal glasses. We stay up too late, given that we have young children, and life feels a bit more pleasant and promising for it.
Wild things happen in our bodies when we share a meal. Our digestion improves. Our stress hormones decrease, and our bonding hormones increase. Our relationships are strengthened. Our spirits are buoyed.
Having been the grateful recipient of many dinner parties—and having hosted many with my top chef and lover—I have THOUGHTS on what makes a great one.
Virtues of a good dinner party
Set the tone. Ambiance is everything. Candles and lighting are essential. Dinner party without candlelight? I’d rather eat in the gutter. Overly bright overhead lighting is also a real vibe killer. Set it low, light the tapers, create a mood.
Get out your cloth napkins and china. I don’t always bust out the china, because I am lazy, but this is an opportunity to be a little MUCH. What’s the point of having these nice things if you never use them? Even if it’s a Tuesday night and you’re serving sandwiches, use the real napkins. I’ll always remember the gentle disdain from Antoine, my sister’s Parisian lover, when I asked him if we should just use paper plates. “Oh, absolutely not,” he said quietly. “Abby, it’s dinner.”
Pick a perfect soundtrack. This is admittedly Guion’s area of expertise, and he slays in this department. If he’s not around, my go-to is something chic from the 60s or 70s, like Getz/Gilberto (1964) or this chill Japanese 70’s folk that Guion has on vinyl that I can never remember the name of.
Offer something to snack on before the main course. Whether it’s a bowl of olives or a handful of nuts, people want to eat something before they eat something. It makes everyone relax a bit.
Have seating for your guests before the meal is served, preferably close to or in the kitchen. I hate having guests stand around in the kitchen; it feels like people queuing at a deli. Guests need a place to sit and talk to you while a meal is finished, where you can give them a drink and some food.
Level up the conversation. Verboten: Small talk. Gossip. The weather and trips we’ve taken and the children’s schedules. Pursue, instead: Politics, religion, aspirations, the life of the mind, books, ideas, controversies of all shapes and sizes! Having questions at the ready is essential. Especially with new friends, good conversation doesn’t usually just happen. Someone needs to make it happen with thoughtful prompts. Bonus points if they’re edgy; you know that’s my preference.
Dress up. Wear the dress; put on the jacket. Related to using the good china. Don’t save the good stuff for some future date. The time is now.
Don’t sex segregate. I also loathe a party where all the men talk only to the men and all the women talk only to the women. It’ll happen this way naturally, which is why you have to be mindful in your planning. Mixing the sexes is an essential component of scintillating conversation.
Put the kids somewhere else. Whether it’s to bed or to the basement or to a kids’ table, find a way to gainfully employ small children. It’s hard (nay, impossible?) to have a great dinner party with little kids. I love having family dinners, when people come over with their kiddos, and absolute chaos ensues, but I do not consider those to be proper dinner parties, because I can’t complete a full sentence the entire night. Occupy the little ones—or get a sitter.
Let time unspool. The perfect dinner party occurs when no one’s looking at the clock, no one’s trying to get out the door, no one has somewhere else to be. Pour another drink; have another piece of cake; tomorrow doesn’t exist yet! Work to cultivate such an atmosphere.
But, with all of this, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If you don’t have candles or cloth napkins or a built-in pro chef, have the dinner party anyway.
It’s always better to share a meal with people than to eat alone. Do it as often as you can. And in this way, we fight back against the cynicism and isolation that so plagues our age.
In closing, a prayer from Robert Farrar Capon, a frequent reference in my household on the subject of dining well and dining with others:
“O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true men—to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve Thee as Thou hast blessed us—with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Amen.”
Send out some dinner party invitations. Dust off your good china. Book the babysitter. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Currently reading
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
Vienna, Richard Cockett
The Man Who Saw Everything, Deborah Levy
The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer
I have turned a new leaf this year and our family has begun hosting dinners almost every weekend. What a worthwhile practice this is for what have become poorly exercised hosting muscles! And what returns, already!
Fantastic. Thank you for this!