HOW TO HOST

‘When did parties get so serious? Aren’t we meant to be having fun?’

words by alexandra dudley | photography by felix russell-saw

A child, my favourite thing was to sneak downstairs in the early hours after my parents’ dinner parties to inspect the table they had left behind. Red wine spilled across the tablecloth, empty packets of Silk Cut, boxes of Bendicks bitter mints and forgotten jugs of cream. Each detail offered a glimpse into a world I would soon enter and the cheerful reassurance that, although they insisted on me completing my homework, my parents knew how to have real fun. Entertaining was in my blood and I hosted my first dinner party as a spotty teenager for six school friends, faithfully following my mother’s canapé recipe for crostini with goat’s cheese, sun-dried tomato and basil pesto (delicious). The hazelnut caramel chocolate tart recipe I’d ripped out of a magazine was a complete disaster, but I learnt a lot and have since hosted hundreds of dinner parties.

“Hosting” has become very on trend. I have never liked trends, but I have always loved dinner parties. The fixation on themed dinner parties (especially online) has, I believe, gone a little too far. A Texan feast of slowcooked- beef-brisket, cowboy caviar and peach cobbler sounds divine! Having to eat it whilst wearing a plastic cowboy hat? Less so.