Formal dinners are over, but casual cooking for friends throws up a new set of dilemmas. Here is a foolproof etiquette guide for being a good host – and an ever better guest A decade ago, that monitor of good manners, the Telegraph, was already mourning the demise of the classic dinner party. Last year, Nigella Lawson, who off camera you might imagine inhabits a world of place cards and polished silver, set the concept in 1970s aspic jelly when she told the BBC: “I’m not a formal dinner party person.”Yet eating at home with friends or family, or even a volatile mix of the two, is still hugely popular. Albeit now in a far looser format, from a buffet for people scattered about the house to a casual get-together where no one is laying out different wine glasses or (the horror!) seating interesting strangers in a way that is meant to generate sparkling conversation. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…The new rules of dinner parties: don’t be on time – and bring more booze than you need
