The Dinner Party Is Back. Thankfully, It Has Changed.

The Dinner Party Is Back. Thankfully, It Has Changed.

The new rules of entertaining are considerably less complicated: fewer courses, better ingredients, a proper drink, and a host who actually sits down.

For a while, entertaining became exhausting.

The table needed a theme.

The flowers needed to look effortless despite requiring considerable effort.

There were place cards, complicated menus, signature cocktails and photographs taken before anyone was permitted to disturb the evidence.

Somewhere along the way, having people over began to resemble producing an event.

Thankfully, the dinner party is changing again.

And we think it is becoming considerably better.

The most interesting tables right now are neither particularly formal nor aggressively casual. They occupy a much more appealing territory in between.

There may be linen napkins and very good olive oil.

There may also be a bowl of potato chips.

The glasses might be crystal.

Dinner might be tomatoes, bread, cheese and something from a beautiful tin.

Nobody apologizes for any of it.

The objective is no longer to demonstrate how much work went into dinner.

The objective is to make everyone want to stay.

Rule Nº 01: Stop Cooking Before Your Guests Arrive

This may be the most important change.

The host should be at the table.

Not sautéing something.

Not reducing something.

Not disappearing every twelve minutes to check something in the oven.

The new luxury of entertaining is presence.

Prepare one thing if you enjoy cooking.

Buy the rest exceptionally well.

A beautiful cheese.

Excellent olives.

Good bread.

Mustard worth putting directly on the table.

A jar of something French.

Tomatoes that need nothing more than olive oil and salt.

There is no shame in assembly.

In fact, knowing what not to cook is one of the more sophisticated skills a host can develop.

Rule Nº 02: One Excellent Thing Is Better Than Seven Impressive Things

Every table needs one thing people remember.

Not seven.

Perhaps it is an extraordinary bottle of olive oil poured generously over tomatoes.

Perhaps it is a mustard nobody has tasted before.

Perhaps someone opens a beautiful tin of sardines.

Perhaps dessert is nothing more than vanilla ice cream with exceptional honey and fleur de sel.

This is enough.

When everything is special, strangely, nothing is.

Choose your moment.

Rule Nº 03: Bring Back the Drink Before Dinner

There should be a period in which nobody is expected to eat dinner yet.

We are strong believers in this.

Call it cocktail hour.

Call it aperitivo.

Call it five-thirty.

The terminology is less important than the ritual.

A cold martini.

Olives.

Almonds.

Potato chips in a silver bowl if you have one.

Something salty.

Nothing requiring a fork.

The drink before dinner creates the part of the evening that modern entertaining too often eliminates: transition.

People arrive.

They settle.

They talk.

Someone makes another drink.

Dinner can wait.

Very often, this becomes the best part of the night.

Rule Nº 04: Use the Good Things

The good glasses.

The linen napkins.

The serving bowl you worry is too beautiful for everyday use.

Use them.

There is something rather sad about owning beautiful things exclusively for occasions important enough to deserve them.

Friday is an occasion.

So is Wednesday.

The people sitting at your table are the occasion.

This does not mean setting a formal table.

Quite the opposite.

A beautiful object becomes considerably more interesting when treated casually.

Put potato chips in the silver.

Serve mustard from its jar beside an old porcelain plate.

Use the crystal tumbler for water.

Mix things.

A table should look as though it belongs to the person who lives there.

Not to the person who styled it.

Rule Nº 05: Do Not Make Everything Match

Matching is easy.

Collecting takes time.

The most memorable tables rarely look as though everything arrived in the same box.

Different glasses.

Old plates beside new ones.

Linen that has been washed enough times to become soft.

Silver with a little patina.

A serving piece inherited from someone whose taste you may not otherwise share.

This is what gives a table personality.

Perfection has very little personality.

Rule Nº 06: Put the Pantry on the Table

For generations, the pantry was backstage.

We think it deserves a promotion.

Beautiful jars, tins and bottles should come directly to the table.

There is intimacy in opening something together.

A jar of olives.

Honey.

Mustard.

Conservas.

Jam at breakfast.

Fleur de sel beside the tomatoes.

Good packaging becomes part of the landscape of the meal, and provenance becomes part of the conversation.

Someone inevitably picks up the jar.

“Where is this from?”

That question is one of our favorite things about food.

Rule Nº 07: Dinner Does Not Need Three Courses

Sometimes dinner is a large platter placed in the middle of the table.

Sometimes it is several small things.

Sometimes it is pasta.

Sometimes it is cheese followed inexplicably by more cheese.

There is no committee governing this.

The great advantage of entertaining at home is that a restaurant is not being operated.

There is no menu architecture to respect.

Serve what you actually want to eat.

Rule Nº 08: Dessert Can Be Almost Embarrassingly Simple

Vanilla ice cream.

Excellent honey.

A few crystals of fleur de sel.

Done.

Or strawberries and cream.

Chocolate broken directly onto a plate.

Good cookies with espresso.

Dessert is often where otherwise sensible hosts suddenly decide to prove something.

Resist.

By this point everyone has eaten.

They have had something to drink.

The candles are lower.

Nobody requires architecture made of pastry.

Give them something delicious.

Rule Nº 09: Leave Something on the Table

A completely cleared table can accidentally announce that the evening is over.

Leave the bottle.

Leave the chocolates.

Leave the bowl of almonds.

Bring coffee.

Open another bottle if the evening requires it.

The best dinners have an unofficial second act.

Chairs move.

Someone returns to the cheese.

The conversation becomes better.

Nobody quite remembers when dinner ended.

That is usually a good sign.

Rule Nº 10: Your Guests Will Remember How the House Felt

Not whether every course arrived simultaneously.

Not whether the napkins matched.

Not whether the flowers were arranged professionally.

They will remember the lamp that was left on in the library.

The music.

The cold drink handed to them when they arrived.

The bread being passed.

Someone laughing from the kitchen.

The fact that they stayed an hour longer than expected.

This is hospitality.

And perhaps that is why the dinner party is returning in a different form.

We have spent years making ordinary life faster, more convenient and increasingly digital.

Sitting around a table does the opposite.

It is inefficient.

It takes time.

People linger.

Nothing can be optimized.

Good.

At Lello, we believe the most luxurious table is not necessarily the one with the most expensive things on it.

It is the one nobody wants to leave.

Set the table. Open something good. Invite people over.