Dinner

I’m not Sure I like the connotations of the term Dinner Party, but I think we’re stuck with it. Kitchen Suppers – which is perhaps what this chapter should be called – sounds altogether too twee, even if it evokes more accurately the culinary environment most of us now inhabit. So let’s just call it dinner, which is what it is. The modern dinner party was the invention of the post-war, post-Elizabeth David brigade of socially aware operators: this was the age of Entertaining-with-a-capital-E. Not only was the food distinctly not home food, it wasn’t even restaurant food: what was evoked was the great ambassadorial dinner. But autres temps, autres moeurs: most of us don’t even have dining-rooms any more. Yet people still think they should be following the old culinary agenda: they feel it is incumbent on them not so much to cook as to slave, to strive, to sweat, to perform. Life doesn’t have to be like that. As far as I’m concerned, moreover, it shouldn’t be like that. I find formality constraining. I don’t like fancy, arranged napkins and I don’t like fancy, arranged foods.