resurgence of the dinner party

During culinary school one of my favourite things to do was get together with my friends and have a dinner party. On one of our quieter days we would all meet at someone's apartment and have plenty of drinks, plenty of food and plenty of laughs. In a world where cooks can’t often afford to eat in the restaurants they work at, dinner parties with friends are the best way to get the same (if not better) experience. However in today’s economy it’s not just hospitality workers who can’t afford to eat out, most people can hardly justify anything other than fast food with regularity. Dinner parties just might be the answer to the question of “what should we do this weekend?”.

Dinner party prep

Thanks to the pandemic, home cooks dusted off their aprons and started cooking for themselves again. I believe that because of covid, we all became better cooks as a whole. There used to be a time when learning how to cook was mandatory in school, we’ve strayed so far away from that and cooking for yourself has become a lost art. A few years ago you were an absolute stud if you knew how to make meat and potatoes at home. Now that more people have gotten into cooking I believe the bar has been raised significantly. Instagram is another huge influence for people to host dinner parties. Nothing is more of a flex than showing off your table full of homemade food and drinks, surrounded by your closest friends. As a cook myself, I'm often more impressed with what my industry friends are cooking at home than by what they’re making at work. It's an opportunity to cook exactly what you want, and how you want to cook it. You don’t always get to do that at work. You don’t have to deal with endless allergies and modifications to dishes you already don’t like when cooking at home. You can make things your way.

Grilled skewers 

I think restaurants can learn a lot from the humble dinner party. In a world where originality is sparse and fresh ideas are rare, people crave personalization and curation. I think it’s finally time that restaurants get away from the five page menus with tons of different dishes that hardly get ordered. Yes it will take a lot of work to shrink the menu, but I think the benefits greatly outweigh the cost. Of course a restaurant’s goal should be to make money while serving the public, but it can be done in such a better way. When I was working at a restaurant that cooked hyper seasonally and served hyper local it was like living in a dream every day. We changed the menu every week and hardly ever had issues coming up with new ideas, because we were only serving what's in season. Now I'm not saying that every restaurant should adopt this model because they would all inevitably end up bleeding their bank accounts dry trying to keep up. But if the average restaurant could adopt a few of these practices I truly think that their customers would happily welcome the change, and the kitchen staff would be grateful they don’t have to cook the same things every single day.

People love to feel like they’re the star of the show, the special guest, bottom line is they like to feel important. If they got to go to their favourite restaurant and have the opportunity to order from a new menu that feels like it was made just for them, I guarantee they’d have a better experience. I don’t think it’s necessary to completely overhaul the menu every single week or even every month. But implementing a rotating seasonal menu while keeping the crowd favourites would be rewarding to customers and cooks alike.