| Issue #32, November 3, 2006 |
Eating Your Way Around Town
Who doesn’t want to go to a dinner party? Who actually wants to host a dinner party? As fun as hosting an evening of food and friends can be, it can also be a stress on the host and hostess. There is a menu to plan and shop for, food to cook, a table to set, and perhaps most daunting of all, a house to clean.
So why not divide up the cleaning, the cooking, and all the other responsibilities between the guests? Make every guest a host by turning your dinner into a progressive dinner party. The basic idea behind a progressive dinner party is that each couple or person plays host for one course. The guests move between homes, enjoying a new course at each one.
Of course, this works best when all diners live close together, preferably in the same apartment building, development, or at least neighborhood. To avoid too much of the night being eaten up traveling between homes, allot about forty-five minutes per course and plan to serve no more than three or four courses.
Because each course will be somewhat time sensitive, choose dishes that you can prepare ahead of time and simply reheat when the party reaches your home. After all, you won’t have those few frantic hours in your kitchen before your guest ring the doorbell that you would have at a regular dinner party, because you too will be coming from another course down the block.
You also will not have a span of a few hours at one location. This means no lazy after-dinner hours for sobering up from those pre-dinner cocktails, so be sure to plan your travel to and from homes accordingly. In spring or summer, a pleasant walk between host houses will be a welcome chance for digestion between courses. For a more lavish evening, have everyone chip in for a limo to shuttle guests from house to house in style. Imagine you are spending a night on the town going from restaurant, to lounge to club, instead of to the Smiths’ to the Bakers’ to the Jones’.
You could also imagine you are going from Italian restaurant, to Mexican cantina, to sushi bar by having each host prepare a course from a different country. If you have a particularly international group of friends, have each one make a dish unique to their culture.
You might also try one continuous theme that winds through all the courses. This is especially well suited for the holidays. Everyone wants to share, or at least show off, their favorite Christmas or Thanksgiving recipes, and they can when everyone is both a host and chef.
Yet, not everyone is born a chef. The progressive dinner party is very sensitive to culinary incompetence. Maybe you make a mean pot roast, but your flan is inedible; volunteer to host the main course and leave desert for one of you fellow hosts to look after. In this way, the progressive dinner party allows you to showcase your particular kitchen talents while not subjecting your guests to your culinary shortcomings.
A progressive dinner party can be more than a chance to show off your best chef skills. It can also be a way for organizations to welcome new members and to acquaint them with established members. The first course, such as cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, can take place at the organization’s office building, outside bar or hall. Then, the guests can break into groups and proceed with their own progressive dinner parties. This plan enables new members to meet everybody at once and then to meet a few others later in a much more intimate setting.
–Renée Donlon
 |
