Foodies, rejoice, for your god is back. Yes, Yotam Ottolenghi, he of the aubergine pulp and pomegranate molasses, releases a new cookbook, Plenty More, this week, meaning the Notting Hill dinner-party set will now be fretting about getting their hands on kashk (look it up) and dakos (no, us neither).
It’s not all about the food, of course: the modern dinner party is a minefield of social anxiety where your guests will see everything and judge you horribly on your table settings/booze/small talk. So which dinner-party stereotype are you? Know thy tribe — and how to behave if you get an invitation.
Notting Hill 'kitchen supper'
This “kitchen” is not like any kitchen you’ve ever seen before, more like a window display at a large department store. Where is all the stuff? Where are the Post-it notes, cat-worming tablets, rolls of ratty wrapping paper and bits of Lego? Make no mistake, this is not a kitchen supper, this is a Notting Hill “kitchen supper”, where the women are head-to-to in Isabel Marant and the men slip quietly out to the hall to finalise £3m deals on their mobiles. The food is Ottolenghi, of course, the sine qua non of the Notting Hill kitchen-supper set. Ottolenghi food seems on the surface delightfully paysan, with its rustic tumbling salads and exotic spices, but it is, in fact, a pain in the bum to put together, with 4,000 ingredients for each dish and so much chopping, you need a galley of slaves.
The hostess looks quite relaxed, because she actually does have a galley of (paid) slaves in her real kitchen downstairs in the basement to do all the chopping (that, or she has bought it all ready-made at the Ottolenghi shop). Pudding — rhubarb muffins with a white-chocolate crumble topping — goes untouched because no guest, male or female, has eaten carbohydrates for five years. Feeling bad, everyone begs to take it home “for the kids”, though, of course, none of their kids is actually allowed within 3ft of refined sugar.
Wear Anything from “What’s new” on Net-a-porter.
Say “I completely support the homework boycott at Notting Hill Prep.”
Don’t mention You’re not crazy about pomegranate molasses, actually.
Dalston pop-up
Blue smoke billows into the living room from the balcony of this former local-authority flat just off Kingsland Road: the host is trying his hand at popcorn chicken, a witty take on the KFC bestseller, but the deep-fat fryer is belching out dark, foul-smelling clouds, making everything stink like a chippy. Never mind, this dinner party is more about the booze than the food, anyway; what else are “sliders”, after all, than a greasy, white-carb overload to offset quite a lot of strong spirits?
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Once there, you cannot find anywhere stable to sit because the chairs are so mismatched that one or two don’t have enough legs to stand up properly. Flowering weeds stolen from overgrown gardens and central reservations wilt in jam jars; at 9pm, a couple wander in, having been told this was a supper club, clutching a bottle of really very OK gavi di gavi.
By 10.42pm, they are doing the conga, both wearing someone else’s check shirt. The fire brigade arrive after the deep-fat fryer finally catches light on the balcony; the host, now paranoid and partly insane from too many homemade Sazeracs, dives with a wild scream to protect his vinyl.
Wear A check shirt. Add some sort of rag in your hair if you are a girl. Millions and millions of tattoos.
Say “Pop-ups are so 2011. I’m all about street food now.”
Don’t mention That you’d rather be eating a fish pie in a nice clean Fulham kitchen.
Formal countryside hoopla
The entire north-facing wall of this Cotswold-stone rectory near Chipping Norton had to be removed in order to get the giant 14ft x 8ft dining table in. But it is key to the formal countryside in-home meal-time event, because dressing the table is everything. Lady Bamford had real live chicks at her Easter lunch! How can you top that?
The countryside isn’t like town; here, Thursday night is everything and Saturday is takeaway-and-telly night: on the weekend, country folk go wild. When you arrive at 7.45pm on the dot, you are given a glass of pink champagne, because the hostess has panicked under the pressure and gone for something naff on the basis that it’s so bad, it must be good.
Absolutely everything is five years behind the current urban trend, so they are still working their way through Tender by Nigel Slater; as a result, dinner is a roast, and the vegetables (from their own veg patch) are all drowning in cheese.
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But forget the food. Look at the table centrepiece, for God’s sake. It consists of 12 Victorian specimen domes filled with tiny mouse skulls, ancient books, eagles’ feathers, hollow eggs, silver ink wells, a stuffed stoat and other gory junk thought of as “Victoriana”. The hostess was inspired by a display she saw at Petersham Nurseries on her last trip up to town. In fact, it’s stunning — it’s a masterpiece — but all she can think is how boring the conversation is because people aren’t drinking: they have to drive home.
Wear J Brand needlecords, a £500 grey cashmere sweater and anything from Annina Vogel.
Say “The vet bills at Calea Equestrian are crazy.”
Don’t mention That you think the stuffed stoat might have fleas.
Field-to-table macho dinner
This dinner party seemed such an excellent idea when it was conceived during a boys’ lunch in Soho — catch, dig up and pick everything for a dinner party yourself. The host will boast in advance that you are having trout ceviche, grouse and a simple, delicious poached quince for dinner. Stomach growling, you will arrive to find a kitchen full of feathers and mud. There is a frightening smell in the air. The host will give you a sheepish look and say that, er, actually, due to a series of cock-ups, instead of the trout ceviche and the grouse and the poached quince, dinner is, in fact, nettle soup, roast snipe with boiled tubers and very tiny, very sour blackberries. No cream, forgot, sorry.
The conversation will revolve solely around the host’s foraging efforts as he crashes around the kitchen trying to turn this ghastly collection of weeds and tough wading birds into something edible. Alas, despite such good intentions, the snipe tastes like nosebleed and the nettle soup is just boring — the sprinkling of tiny flowers on top, while fashionable, is horribly bitter. You have to gorge on the soda bread made by the host’s worried girlfriend an hour ago in order to stay alive. (“It’s fine! It’s fine! At least there’s the bread.”) The real ale, served to accompany the food in a hideous effort at homeliness, makes everyone feel bloated and sleepy.
Wear Any of your clothes that have holes in.
Say “I’ve just joined the Outdoor Swimming Society.”
Don’t mention That the host’s cat has just jumped onto the kitchen island and is licking the butter.