The latest gospel of hosting arrived on my phone this week in the form of a woman announcing, quite seriously, that she recommends setting your table at least seven days before her guests arrive. “If you don’t have a spare dining table,” she adds, “create a table inventory.”
I don’t own a rehearsal table, or a stand-in table, or any piece of furniture intended for dry runs. I also don’t own the at-home sushi conveyor belt I’m told is essential for hosting the perfect, casual sushi night with pals – a kind of sashimi Scalextric that loops raw fish around the dining table. What I do have is greaseproof paper, which another hosting guru insists I should sheath my entire kitchen counter with, rebirthing it as one gigantic cheeseboard.
This creeping sense of unreality then followed me to an East London restaurant opening this summer, where it reached its natural, wheezing conclusion. The room centred around a trestle table, draped in a cloth that could be generously described as artificial silk – the sort used for Halloween capes – and accessorised with two candelabras (also possibly Halloween props), a vase of peonies and a few metal platters. I nearly aspirated my canapé when I learnt that the tablescapers had charged the restaurant £5,000 for this arrangement of flammable nylon.
The restaurant went on to receive several damning reviews, and I can’t help feeling that the attention lavished on polyester pleats was not, in the end, the winning investment. That display of prom-grade fabric solidified the lurking suspicion that this so-called art of hosting hasn’t just gone too far – it has marched off up the entirely wrong alley and throttled the casual dinner behind the bins while it’s at it.
The year is 2025, and the gold standard of having people over for food now revolves around a very specific aesthetic and rulebook. Cutlery must match, preferably with riveted handles. Tables must heave with wildflowers apparently yanked from a Provençal verge – or, failing that, a still life of Natoora radicchio ideally in the style of a Rembrandt.
Plates should be mismatched, though heavily curated; bonus points if they’re inherited from a dead relative. Jesus wept over square plates. Never serve straight from the pan – unless it’s cast iron, in which case you may, but only if it has patina earned through generations of duck fat. Candlesticks must be Scandinavian.
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The food should be meticulously assembled yet appear effortless; and pre-prepared to maximise the precious time you have with your cherished guests. You should handwrite the menu on a piece of card, preferably embossed with a lino print you etched earlier, in between whipping the olive oil chocolate mousse and carving plates of crudités.
Be expressive! Be individual! Just make sure it’s the same expression of individuality as everyone else is doing. Oh, and of course, remember that the people telling you how to perfect the art of hosting are, when the camera switches off and tripods tucked away, probably eating alone.
This is not to say I don’t admire a beautifully set table. And I know that for many, the hosting arc is now a legitimate income stream, not to mention plenty are genuinely talented with a brilliant eye. As someone who earns a living writing about the nuances between Christmas chutneys or ranking hot cross buns, I’m hardly in a position to scoff at a whimsical income.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten the main point of having people over for dinner, which is to enjoy the company of other human beings. You can have linen napkins, dinky coupes and pre-batched Palomas – but if your guests make you want to walk into traffic, none of it matters. The company determines the success of the evening above everything else. In fact, the food is largely irrelevant.
Some of the best dinner parties I’ve attended featured subpar, if not legitimately bad, food eaten off scratched Wilko plates. A lockdown dinner with housemates once involved a toad in the hole dyed Kermit green, served with lamb keema, and it was one of the most enjoyable nights of my life.
Of course, tablescaping and hosting tips aren’t new. You only need to glance at an oil painting of a 16th-century banquet, dust off Martha Stewart’s bibles or ask a child of the ‘80s. But today, this relentless deluge of homogenised curated aesthetics, hacks, commandments, and noise feels less for the everyman than ever.
It reeks of marketing, sponsorships and metrics all piped through the nozzle of whipped feta. And while that might work for Balenciaga’s lunches during London Fashion Week, no one needs to feel that a lasagne for four in a flat in Camberwell requires art direction.
In fact, the more engineered the evening, the more anaemic the fun tends to be, and the more monumental the task of hosting becomes, to the point where you stop inviting people over for dinner at all.
So, as Christmas approaches and we’re forcibly deep-throated with a fresh avalanche of hosting rules, remember that the true art of hosting is childishly simple: provide enough food and invite people who don’t drain your will to live.
