The Dinner Party Project begins

The aim: To hold one dinner party a month

Reason: To see if it’s worth resuscitating a dying social tradition

Let’s face it—there’s a lot of good reasons to get together with your friends at a restaurant rather than around your dining room table.

You don’t have to cook, you don’t have to clean your house, you can go home when you want and you don’t have to put up with lingering guests having one more drink when you just want to go to bed. Not to mention the cost.

A recent UK survey found 40% of people have cut the number of dinner parties they host because of the increasing food prices. With the average cost of a dinner party at $95, many households can’t stretch the budget to entertain regularly. But it’s not only the cost that puts people off; 25% of those surveyed said it was too stressful to serve up a three-course meal to six or more people.

Certainly, being the ‘hostess with mostest’ was a fraught experience in the past when the dinner party was an indicator of your social standing.

Throwing elaborate dinner parties was a way to show off your wealth in Victorian times, particularly for the emerging middle classes. If you think it’s stressful cooking a three-course meal, spare a thought for the 1870s lady of the house (or, rather, her cook), whose guests expected to dine on 12 courses.

Not only that, etiquette was as important as the meal itself. There were strict rules on what crockery, napery and silver to use, how many people of each gender to invite, who should sit next to whom, the conversation subjects allowed, even who should walk into the dining room first. Talk about hard work.

Being invited to a dinner party could be way more stressful than holding one, though, if you happened to be on the guest list of some of the corrupt and powerful families of centuries past.

    

Taking your place at the Borgias’ table in the 1500s could mean taking your life in your hands. Legend has given them a reputation for poisoning guests who threatened their power, hence the saying, ‘tasting the cup of the Borgias’ came to mean sudden, mysterious death.

There’s no such agenda with The Dinner Party Project. It’s just an idea to bring people together for a meal to enjoy good company, good conversation and possibly good food (although of the three aims, that is the least likely to be met if I do all the cooking.)

Who am I? I'm an average Aussie mum with below average culinary skills who has nevertheless managed to feel three daughters to adulthood. (Did I mention their father is pretty handy in the kitchen? Thank goodness for that.) 

There will be a few rules attached to the project, but they will not be onerous and any poisoning will be purely accidental.

The Dinner Party Project will post one blog a week covering the monthly dinner party: the first will discuss the theme, the second will cover the menu and costing of each dish, the third will report on the actual dinner party, the fourth will be the debrief.

As our much-loved Australian cook, food author, restaurateur and food manufacturer Maggie Beer has said: ‘Food to me is the ultimate nurturer and the best way I know of giving one’s time, effort and care to others. It brings people together in the most wonderful way.’

So, with a bit of time, effort and care, let’s bring people together for a good night out—at our house.

The Dinner Party Project ‘rules’:

Don’t spend too much money on food (each dinner party will be costed)

Don’t spend too little on beverage

Minimise preparation, decoration and presentation

Maximise the number of people who come to dinner over the year

Mix up the menus, themes and guests.

Next blog: 2 February

First dinner party: 16 February