Dinner Parties: When You Get the Invite, Respond Right

Photo courtesy of borevagen on flickr.

So last week I drew this hazy, rosy picture of Dinner Party Utopia, and you found yourself daydreaming all week about putting on an ascot for dinner at the Davenports’ didn’t you? When you awoke from this blissful reverie were you suddenly gripped with panic about what to do after you donned the trousers that match the ascot?

As I said last week, dinner parties are special—even a bit magical in this crazy beautiful city we live in. Being invited into someone’s home, their private space is very intimate. The fact that they are offering to cook for you ratchets the intimacy up that much more, so when this invitation comes you should definitely greet it with a full-throated YES. If all of this talk of your hosts’ sharing of their private sanctuary hasn’t swayed you, look at this angle: when you visit the bathroom you can rifle through their medicine cabinet—confirming or dashing your suspicions about their pharmaceutical habit. (Just kidding—I know we all do it but that doesn’t make it right.)

And speaking of right, what do you *do* when someone invites you to dinner? Are you running through your mental rolodex now for that Miss Manners column you read in high school? How long has it been since you have been invited over to a friend’s (or better—a stranger’s!) home for a lovingly cooked meal?  Below are 11 tips that I sincerely hope you will need to use tout suite!

1) Call or email to say, Heck Yeah! I would love to come!
2) Immediately install it on your Google calendar so you aren’t tempted to triple schedule that night.
3) Peruse the menu (if given) in the email; keep your non-lethal food allergies/dislikes to yourself
4) Ask if there is anything the host needs/wants you to bring
5) If you do not have your black belt in wine drinking or selection toddle down to your local wine store and avail yourself of their knowledge. (Wine geeks LOVE to tell you what to drink.) Select a nice bottle or two to bring to the Host/ess.
 *During this transaction—never feel awkward setting a specific budget of how much you want to spend. It helps the sales person guide you in the right direction, and truthfully, if you slept in a bed stuffed with hundred dollar bills at night you would be having your butler call this order in and you would not be sullying yourself with such trivialities.
5) Show up ON TIME. Not early, and Not late. On. Time. If this means that you walk around the block and peer in neighbors windows to kill 10 minutes, so be it. Trust me, as someone who throws dinner parties at least once a week, the early bird does *not* get the worm on this one.
6) When you arrive, offer the host/hostess a drink. I know it should be the other way around, but sometimes this can be crunch time, and they forget their roles. Plus, it is a nice way to offer to help. If they decline your assistance, believe them and make yourself comfortable out of the kitchen, chit chatting with others, or taking that trip to the bathroom medicine cabinet that we spoke about earlier.
7) During dinner, feel free to cast aside the “don’t talk about religion or politics” adage. No one really talks knowledgably about these any more—especially religion, and it can really spice the night up.
8) Help clear the table.
9) Don’t be the first one to take your clothes off or the last one to leave, but for God’s sake, stay as long as it is fun.
10) Call or email the next day with a brief thank you.
11) Start thinking about the dinner party you want to throw, and pay your lovely hosts back by inviting them!

Next week: Ok, so I am tired of waiting for someone to invite me over, so I am going to take the plunge and have my own dinner party. But… How do I do that?

Tamara Reynolds is a self taught cook and freelance writer living in Astoria, Queens.