Hosting a dinner party is a big effort. Depending on your style you may have to clean up the house, shop for and make a meal, set the table, arrange flowers, restock the bar, make a music mix, arrange for childcare or kid-friendly alternatives, get yourself dressed and presentable, light the candles, and arrange the hors d'oeuvres. Phew! All this is good to do but as a host your most important task is to make your guests feel welcome and comfortable. Read on for 8 basic tips on how to do just that.
Making your guests feel comfortable is not that difficult but it does mean that you have to divide your attention between the meal prep and host duties. Unless of course you're co-hosting the party with a friend or partner, in which case it makes sense to have one person focus on the guests and the other on the food. Here are a few basics to assure that your guests will feel welcome and comfortable in your home and at your table.
1. Greet them at the door and offer them a drink right away.
2. Introduce them to other guests and start them off on a conversation.
3. Find out if they have food allergies/sensitivities ahead of time and plan a meal around that rather than drawing attention to them with a 'special exception' dish. This is not always possible, but nice when you can.
4. Remember favorites (kind of wine or brand of whiskey, for example, or a special pasta dish) and be sure to have it on hand.
5. Don't assume that people from other countries want to eat the food of their home country. If you went to a home in Japan, would you want to be served cheeseburgers? That said, if you are confident that you excel in their cuisine and want to offer them a taste of homecooking, by all means give it a go.
6. If the group doesn't know one another very well, serve food that's not too difficult to eat or that doesn't requite a battery of special utensils.
7. Pay attention to the lighting and temperature in the room and adjust accordingly. Have blankets and shawls available if you're hosting an outdoor party.
8. Plan your meal so that you don't have to spend the entire time in the kitchen in a frantic rush. People love good food, but people love people even more and your friends are there to see you.
What do you do to make your guests feel more comfortable and at ease?
Related: Survey: Do You Feel Judged When You Host?
(Image: Dana Velden)
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The most important thing is to make sure whatever you're planning won't be stressful for you. If you're not enjoying yourself, the guests won't either.
It took me quite a while to figure out #8...after many gatherings of friends watching me slave away in the kitchen, a close friend of mine brought it to my attention. Now I try to mix a few make-ahead dishes with one or two last minute fixes. Now I get to enjoy the party, too!
6. If the group doesn't know one another very well, serve food that's not too difficult to eat or that doesn't requite a battery of special utensils.
Or, let the food be the ice-breaker: serve something so difficult to eat that it's entertaining.
I've bonded with strangers while hitting crabs with a mallet at a restaurant and while looking at live crawfish and picking through cooked ones at a crawfish boil.
Oee of the first things I remember is not to call it a dinner party--to me that signifies something fussy and formal and it just makes me nervous. We entertain a fair amount , both for work and for friends, and for me it is just "having people over."
For #6...what food or utensil could people be using that requires batteries???
In addition to #1, have some light snacks out on the table that can be eaten standing up, like bread and cheese or vegetables and dip. That way if people arrive hungry but your meal isn't quite done yet, or others arrive late so you can't start right away, you can talk to people and relax without worrying that everybody's going to starve (or, if you're me, that YOU might harm someone without something to take the edge off the hunger). These are also good things to request guests to bring if they ask, because they can just pick them up on their way.
Battery: any large group or series of related things: a battery of questions.
#9 - have some music playing in the background to take the edge off silence. People tend to chat more freely when their voice isn't the only sound in a room.
oh geez...my brain isnt working today! I read it as "a battery OR special utensils" no OF.
I went to a Shabu-Shabu dinner party (hosted by a Japanese friend) and loved every bit of it. It was communal, new, fun and delicious.
Since then I've changed up my dinner party game a little when I have people over. I try and make it a little less about MY food and have it be more about just sharing food together. It's been a lot less stressful and a lot more fun.
my favorite thing to do to make them REALLY talk about the party and sing my praises: make cinnamon buns, wrap them individually in parchment paper, and send them home with guests so they have breakfast in the morning. THEY WILL LOVE YOU. you could do the same with good scones...
http://howtorunyourlife.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-have-fancy-dinner-party-without.html
pam h
and: serve food family style so people participate in passing and helping each other. good ice breaker.
pam h
This may be very obvious, but keep salt and pepper and any other accompaniment (such as parmesan cheese) on the table for people to serve themselves... some people like way more salt then you would consider normal.
Yeah, I'm bad about #8 too. I like to cook so I often make many different components of the meal from scratch, which of course has me running around last minute. I think I need to relax and simplify my meals and buy some stuff or make portions way in advance.
Having a Monday night party in a few weeks (planned before the Kitchn post, of course!) so I'll have a whole weekend to prep. We'll see how it goes!
I agree with drinks. It just loosens everything and everyone up a little more. And I only serve food family style - so much more generous and there's something about the passing of platters that's quite interactive.
Smile !
When you are not inviting too many people (let's say up to six guests), I like having some of them in the kitchen with me. They may have a glass of something in hand, but they may also just come to chat. It allows them to feel more at home, and I enjoy the company.
#8 all the way. We never had dinner parties growing up so when I had my first adult housewarming/Halloween party I wanted it to be special so I decided to cook everything instead of ordering stuff from the deli or just cooking the night before or taking a half day off work to finish everything.
I was still cooking chicken when everyone got there. I casually joked that I should have just gotten fried chicken from Publix and one of my guests abruptly said- "We REALLY would not have minded if you had."
It stung at the time but I understand that I didn't put their needs (to eat and be comfortable) before mine (to provide delcious food I made). It was a bit of a hot mess, but I learned a lot.
Great tips and suggestions from everyone. My number one rule: don't make your guests serve as guinea pigs.
I am an avid cook and love to experiment with new recipes, so it is hard to for me to remember my own advice...but, the stress of trying out a new dish for the first time on your unsuspecting guests is just not worth it.