CHAPTER 8

Entertaining Guests

In college, throwing parties was easy. You’d get a keg of some light beer or a few cases, fill up your bathtub with ice to keep it cold, and send around an e-mail about a “total fucking rager. Dolphin House. Wednesday. Till Friday. Down with Homework.” Scantily clad women would show up, and you would proceed to play beer pong until you threw up in the bushes.

Adult parties are markedly different. You have to buy a bunch of high-class liquor and send out an Evite advertising your sip and quip. Expensively clad women will show up, and you will play wine pong until you throw up on a zen garden. It will be a classier, more expensive vomit, and that will make all the difference.

Yes, as frat parties fade in importance for all but the most desperate of seventh-year seniors, it’s time for you to start throwing some grown-up parties at your place. You can have a few friends over for cocktails, or you can throw a full-on dinner party. Whatever you do, it should send the message of “Hey, I’m an adult who can entertain friends in a sophisticated setting,” so no serving Pez as finger food. (Yes, it’s small enough, but even if you get the most dignified dispenser you can find—baby chick with a top hat emerging from an egg—your guests’ teeth will get sore after their first roll of grape.) Still, with minimal expenditure and some artful faking, even you can have a classy soirée in your home. If you’re thinking about what kind of cover you should charge, you should probably stop trying to make friends; nobody’s going to like you. Have you considered becoming a sleazy party promoter in Daytona Beach?

There is only one rule to remember when entertaining in an adult situation: If it seemed like a great idea in college, it is now a horrible idea. This sentiment includes, but is not limited to, funneling beers, tapping kegs, and taking midterms. Instead, just try standing or sitting around and talking. Don’t worry, people will still be drinking continuously, so there’s no diminished chance that you’ll have someone spend the night. However, you don’t have to take off your shirt and refer to yourself as “The Omega Stud” to make this happen anymore; some witty banter will work much better.

Of course, if you’re going to have all of this classy liquor, you might as well learn how to make some suitable drinks with it. Rum and coke may not reek of sophistication, but it will be significantly better than that chocolate martini recipe you made up, so don’t get too fancy. Seriously, vodka poured into a melted Hershey bar? You thought someone would drink that? Learn how to whip up a few decent drinks people haven’t had a million times before, and you’ll become a great bartender according to everyone you know.

Finally, don’t be intimidated about having guests over. Inviting people into your home shows that you’re confident enough in your culinary and hosting abilities to take on a challenge, and people will generally be happy with free booze and snacks, no matter how they taste. Unless you give them all food poisoning. Then, you’re on your own.

Cooking for Guests

The easiest way to impress guests, especially girls, is being able to cook. At this point, you’re probably saying, “But wait a minute…I can’t cook anything more complicated than Pop-Tarts, and the ones with icing are still too tricky for me.” To which we say: “Of course you can’t.” It doesn’t matter. Unless they’ve been to culinary school, almost all young men are terrible cooks. Girls will still give you points if you cook for them. Part of the points comes from the effort, and if you do it confidently, girls won’t be able to tell you have no idea what you’re doing. Have you looked at the crap they eat? Power bars, limp salads, skinless chicken breasts. You don’t have to be that smug bastard Wolfgang Puck to win over a girl with your cooking. You just have to be marginally better than the line cooks at your local Applebee’s. With the right attitude and easy recipes, you can fake your way through the kitchen and straight into the bedroom.

Throwing Cocktail Parties

Nothing sounds as dignified and classy as a cocktail party. But you have no idea how to throw a successful one. Fear not—it’s easier than it sounds. To prove just how easy, we had a female friend arrange for seven girls we’d never met to come to our office after work. Our plan was to impress them using only our rudimentary knowledge of cooking, poor grammar, and cut-rate dental work.

 

Step 1: Get supplies. Most important, make sure you have the right sort of glasses for whatever you’re serving. It’s not that young ladies won’t be impressed by your Mayor McCheese glass, it’s just that most of them prefer something in a nice Fry Guy. If you’re saying, “Wait…I don’t have cocktail glasses or champagne flutes,” quit your whining, baby. Go to a thrift store, where you can pick them up for a quarter apiece. Don’t worry about everything matching; mismatched stuff done intentionally looks funky and chic.

 

Step 2: Figure out a menu. The key here is to pick things that look impressive or interesting but require very little cooking and can be prepared ahead of time. This way, if anything turns out to be a complete disaster, you can just throw it away, and nobody will be any the wiser. Please note that a bowl of Doritos, even if the Ranch is Cooler than normal, won’t work here. For our party, we tried:

Prosciutto-Wrapped Cantaloupe

Stuffed Dates

Mango Guacamole

All of these things are easy, impressive, and can be prepared beforehand in ten to twenty minutes.

For something that uses a cocktail glass, try making:

Lychee Martini

3 ounces of vodka

1?2ounce lychee juice or syrup

1 lychee, peeled and pitted

Mint leaves

Tacos (for garnish)

Shake the lychee juice and the vodka with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lychee and a mint leaf. If you’re feeling particularly daring, drop a taco or two in the glass to take the flavor south of the border. ¡Muy bueno!

 

For something that will subtly melt girls’ minds:

Pimm’s No. 1 Cup

Pimm’s is an old gin-based liquor from England that has spices and coloring added to it. This punch-type drink was hugely popular in mid-twentieth-century London. Then again, so was fighting in world wars, and we’re not recommending that. Yet.

In a tall glass with ice, pour roughly one third full with Pimm’s and top with lemonade. Add a strawberry and slices of lemon, orange, cucumber, and apple. This tastes like it has no alcohol in it, but your guests will start to feel it after three.

 

For something that will taste like delicious candy but still fuck you up:

Strawberry Hard-Lemonade

Making strawberry-infused vodka is both easy and impressive, and we’ll describe the process in a few pages. Pour about two ounces of strawberry infused vodka per glass and top off with lemonade. Add lots of ice. This will taste both delicious and alcoholic, like some sort of five-year-old bartender sold it to you for five cents. Add a strawberry to every glass for aesthetic purposes.

Music

Every cocktail party needs some music to fill in the awkward silences. Have some light airy sounds playing throughout the party, nothing very loud. And no, the Beastie Boys are not light and airy no matter how many acoustic versions of “Body Movin’” you have. Really? Fifty-two? Jesus, maybe you can make that work.

Ambience

Once you have the proper snack table set, the drinks being poured and the music playing, people will then begin to cluster up into groups of two to four familiar friends. It is your job as host to walk around and try to merge these groups as much as possible. Bring one person from one group into another conversation. You will know the most about everybody there, so it is up to you to facilitate this mingling. If there are any strays by the table mingling with only the guacamole, it’s important that you get them away from your finger foods. Your party depends on it, and nobody’s going to want to talk to them if they’ve got guac stains on their shirt.

 

That’s about it. It may seem like a chore, but a well-orchestrated cocktail party takes about as much effort as any other party would, and it’s ten times as impressive. Now, try not to hurl, you’ve had a lot to drink.

Infusing Your Own Vodka

Another way to get away with fairly cheap booze while still knocking peoples’ socks off is to infuse your own vodka. Infused vodkas can take on the flavor of fruits, herbs, or spices; you’re basically making your own Citron or Razz, but a) it’s got a pretty color and b) it’s impressive that you did it yourself. It’s the easiest thing in the world:


When infusing vodka, it’s better to use sweet fruits like lychee or strawberries and not salty meats like bacon or pork chops (shown above).

Added bonuses: You seem like a trendy vodka bar, when all you really did was spend an extra three bucks on fruit to make your sort-of-cheap sauce taste better. The total work involved here is under fifteen minutes, but no one will know that.

Refilling Liquor Bottles

You may think good parties are merely about finger foods, mood lighting, and song playlists. However, no amount of chicken satay, line dimmers, or Pure 80’s Vol. 12, will compensate for cheap liquor. As such, you should only serve the finest top-shelf liquors at your parties. It shows that you have money and you’re not reluctant to spend it on the enjoyment of your friends and acquaintances. Any vodka below Grey Goose, any gin below Bombay, or any fortified wine below Thunderbird is completely unacceptable to a sophisticated crowd.

This doesn’t have to be as expensive as it sounds. Peoples’ palates aren’t as well tuned to tiny differences among spirits as they’d like to think. They assume Ketel One is a delicious vodka because it comes in a nice bottle and is expensive, not because there’s a perceptible difference in its taste. As such, what you really need are the bottles of these liquors. Find empty bottles somewhere, perhaps by buying an initial bottle of the good stuff as a fixed-cost capital investment. Then, when you have parties, just buy whatever crap they’re selling in plastic handles at the liquor store and refill your top-shelf bottles with it. For the price of two moderately priced handles as most people serve, you can get one great handle and one terrible one. After that, you save money every time you refill the good bottle with cheap booze. Your parties will quickly gain a reputation for having the best booze around, and you’ll start to pull in more attractive members of the opposite sex. The important thing, though, is you’ve done it for pennies on the dollar.


If you are refilling your expensive bottles with cheap liquor, you should refrain from using gasoline—your guests will notice.

 

(Please note: Unless you have a full-scale canning line that can reseal and carbonate 12 oz. cans, this tactic is considerably less effective for beer.)

Ask an Expert—Spirits Advice

Regardless of how well you are dressed and how confident you appear, if you’re not drinking something to match your level of aesthetic sophistication, you may as well be at home in your boxers drinking a Squeeze-It in front of your TV. Unfortunately for you, the world of spirits (liquor, to the rest of us) is as intimidating as the attractive ladies you are trying to impress.

Fortunately for you, we spoke to New York City spirit sommelier Ethan Kelley, who runs the Brandy Library in Tribeca, about the comprehensive world of whisky and cognac. He knows everything there is to know about spirits and imparted the most useful, easy-to-share information with us. The first things you’ll need to know are some general definitions:

“The spirit world is divided up into two main categories, whisky and brandy,” Kelley explained as if he were teaching a sophisticated kindergarten class with a drinking problem. “It’s as simple as beer and wine. If you ferment grains, you get beer. If you distill that beer you get whisky. If you ferment fruit, you get wine. If you distill that wine, you get brandy.” Seems easy enough. So where do cognac, scotch, and bourbon fit in?

It’s easy to remember:

 

Cognac—By far the most famous brandy, it is named after the commune in France where cognac is made. It is a grape-based spirit favored by rappers and other assorted ballers. Bourbon—A type of whisky made in America with at least 51 percent corn in the mash. Scotch—A type of whisky made in Scotland. There are two main kinds of Scotch: single malt and blended.

 

If you are explaining what you’ve learned so far to somebody, their next question will be “What’s the difference between single malt and blended?” If you want to seem like an expert, this is how Mr. Kelley responded:

“This is sort of a soap-box issue for me, but everyone wants to say that blended Scotches are boring. Without blended whiskies being generous and kind enough to buy massive stock from single malt distilleries in order to blend their own, those single malt distilleries would go out of business in a heartbeat.” A drunken, Scottish heartbeat.

Sure, this doesn’t explain what single malt or blended malt whiskies are, but now you sound passionate and thus knowledgeable about spirits. And to think, thirty seconds ago you thought whisky was just what made your mom leave your dad. But just in case somebody calls you out on it:

 

Single Malt—Whisky made from one distillery. The Glen-livet would be an example of a single malt Scotch.

Blended Malt—Whisky mixed and matched from many distilleries. Johnny Walker Black Label is an example of blended malt Scotch.

 

Basically, the makers of blended whisky go around to a lot of little distilleries making single malts and buy a barrel here and a barrel there, then blend them all together to get a consistent flavor. A blended Scotch may have whisky from up to forty different distilleries in it. It’s like science, but for drunk people.

So now that you know the background information, you’re ready to start drinking! It’s important to remember that, unlike high-end call girls, price does not always equal quality in the spirit world. Kelley says, “People who want to spend twenty-five dollars on a pour can come in here and I can give them something for twelve, fourteen dollars a pour that’s better or of equal value.” With prices that low, you can’t afford to be sober!

“An example of this is Johnny Walker Blue Label. Most people who don’t know much about Scotch see the $200 price tag on a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and think to themselves that this is a quality whisky. What they don’t realize is that the base malt of Johnny Walker Blue is Royal Lochnagar, a Scotch which costs roughly 20 percent of what you would pay for Johnny Walker Blue. When people purchase Johnny Walker Blue, they’re not paying for the quality, they’re paying for the marketing. It’s a great Scotch, but so is Royal Lochnagar, which you can get that for about thirty-five dollars a bottle.”

Most bars will have dozens or even hundreds of types of whiskies and brandies. How will you know what type you will like? Kelley says to “Drink what you shot in college. So if you’re used to drinking Jameson and ginger, cut it down to a splash of ginger, over time get rid of it all together.” A good spirit takes time to get used to. Find your favorite, not necessarily the most expensive one. If you’re really insecure, though, your favorite will probably be the most expensive one. Now you’re looking good, champ!


Crying when you drink scotch is usually a sign of alcoholic immaturity or perhaps that your father was killed by a Scotsman.

And as for the drinking itself, Kelley says to enjoy all spirits the same way: slowly. “Sip it. Small sips. Take your time. This is something that should not be drunk inside of ten minutes. You should be able to take your time and enjoy it. If you want to have a cigar with it, have a cigar. If you want to eat a little something, a lot of this stuff goes great with various fruits and even chocolate; you can pair it up, but do not rush it.”

You seem classier already. Or maybe just drunker. Either way, you’re more of something!

Famous People Who Drank Each Cocktail

Occasionally, you’ll want to have seven drinks without having people think you’re some lowbrow roustabout. The easiest way to do this is by establishing yourself as an aficionado of fine spirits who knows his histories, which you can do by casually tossing off the name of someone famous who imbibed or wrote about each drink. These fall into roughly two categories:

 

Tom Collins—J. D. Salinger, who mentions the drink in both The Catcher in the Rye and the novella Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.

Anything but Tom Collins—Hemingway. You can tie Hemingway into at least the following: grappa, the daiquiri, absinthe, cognac, Chianti, Spanish wine, the montgomery (a very dry martini), and just about anything else you can wrap your lips around. You can’t ever go wrong with crediting Hemingway for sparking your interest in a beverage. People will think you’re well-read and urbane; you’ll know that you’re just drunk.


Telling people, “This is what Ernest Hemingway drank every day of his life,” is more convincing when you aren’t about to beer bong a forty.

 

Note: If you ever find yourself below the Mason-Dixon line, substitute Faulkner for Hemingway for similar results.

 

QUICK TIP—Champagne Versus Sparkling Wine: Although the terms are used interchangeably by most people, “champagne” is really only made in the Champagne region of France. Anything else is sparkling wine. You should know this fact, but you should not under any circumstance share it without serious prompting. Everyone hates that guy who says, “Technically, this isn’t really champagne.” You don’t want to be him. Trust us. If you encounter him, tell him that it’s an accepted colloquialism and that nobody likes a semantics snob. He’ll go home and fall asleep clutching his copy of Wine Spectator and sobbing.

Ask an Expert—Beer Advice

It’s a common misconception that wine is the classiest drink around with Great Bluedini Kool-Aid a close second. Contrary to what most people think, beer can be a pretty sophisticated drink in its own right. We interviewed Steve Hindy, the president and founder of Brooklyn Brewery, one of the largest craft brewers in the country, and asked him everything you need to know to seem like you’ve devoted your whole life to beer. Acting knowledgeable about beer is what separates drunkards from connoisseurs.

If you want to seem well-informed about beer, the most important piece of information, says Hindy, is knowing the difference between ales and lagers:

 

Ales: Use top-fermenting yeast strains and warmer brewing temperatures. Generally, when people think “ale,” they have English and Belgian examples in mind, but lots of world-class American ales are available, usually at a fraction of the price.

 

Lagers: Use bottom-fermenting yeast strains and a cold fermentation process known as lagering. These factors lead to clean, crisp flavors that can be quite refreshing. Big American breweries’ beers are watered-down takes on pilsner style of lager, but Germany and the Czech Republic make world-class lagers that are complex and flavorful.

What Else You Need to Know

Glassware is important. As Hindy notes, “It’s really an uphill battle here in the States. For some reason, bars like these stupid straight-sided shaker pint glasses. They’re straight-sided so they don’t hold a head well; there’s no lip on the top to help support it. In order to really get the best sense of the aroma of your beer, the fragrance of the hop character in the beer, you need something that’s kind of curved in a little at the top, something that focuses the fragrance and aroma coming out of the head.” Make sure to repeat this verbatim on your next date to seem learned. It may help to write it on your napkin, but be sure to look up every once in a while to make eye contact. It’s just good public-speaking etiquette.

 

Use good beer to give your parties some dignity. “It’s fun to present beer with food,” says Hindy. “I would have some sliced bread, cheese, and probably have a pilsner beer, a lager beer, an ale, or maybe a porter, and some appropriate cheeses like an aged gouda or a very sharp cheddar, maybe some stilton. Play around with those flavors and get people to taste that beer. Beer is fantastic with cheese.” Serving beer at a party may make you seem like a rich frat boy. Serving nice beer and cheese makes you seem like a sommelier. A little bit of cheese can go a long way.

 

Talk the connoisseur talk. Sounding like you know what you’re talking about with beer is probably simpler than it is with wine. You don’t have to pick out any subtle black currant notes or swirl the glass. Instead, follow Hindy’s advice for an easy first impression. “Take a look at the beer and sniff it. You can tell whether the malt is the primary character of the beer or the hops, and that comes through pretty quickly. A very hoppy beer is going to have a very floral aroma and a very malty beer is almost like cereal—sweetness that comes through to your nose.” Even if you’re not really right in your first impression, whoever you’re talking to probably won’t know any better.

 

Congratulations, you should now know enough about beer to survive a couple of bar dates. Though after seven of these dates, she’ll probably want to go somewhere nicer…

Dealing with the Cops

Oh, man, your party got out of control, and now the cops are there. You should have known this would happen when you got that house next to the police station, no matter how cheap the rent was. Nevermind, now you’re in this predicament, so how do you get out of it?

Your first impulse is probably to smack one of those “fucking pigs” in the face for trying to ruin your good time. Great idea! Nobody will break up the parties you’ll be attending in jail. Unfortunately, you’ll technically be the refreshments at these parties, so it may not be worth it. Instead, calmly answer the door after turning down your music. Be as polite as possible, and open with a line like, “Aw, sorry, is the music too loud?” Ninety percent of the time, the cops come because your neighbors have called to complain about music. Apologize to the cops, admit it was too loud, and promise to turn it down. They should leave at this point, and you can crank it back up.

The best way to deal with the cops is to plan ahead. For several hours before your party, make a series of fake complaints to the cops about the noise coming out of your apartment. As they make stops at your place before the party even starts, try to contain your laughter as you tell them, “Sorry about my annoying neighbors, officer; you can just ignore them for the rest of the night.” When the party hits into high gear and your actual neighbors complain about the noise, nobody will believe their story. Those little neighbors who cried wolf will never know what hit them. (A thrown whisky bottle.)

 

QUICK TIP: You can pass off catered food as your own, but be reasonable. Nobody’s going to believe you just whipped up some S’mores Pop-Tarts.

Throwing a Dinner Party

Any jerk with a credit card and a pair of pants can go out to dinner at a restaurant, but it takes a real man who knows what he’s doing to make it at home. While you can throw some white bread, peanut butter, and Welch’s grape jelly into a blender and call it a PB and J smoothie, you can impress more people with an easy, faked dinner. To prove our point, we asked seven girls from a large magazine in New York to come over for dinner. To prove this can be easily faked, particularly for two people, we waited until the last possible second to start cooking. When buying the ingredients, don’t forget to buy condoms, because you’ll be using them after dinner. (They’re part of the dessert preparation.)

Cashew-Honey Green Beans

1 pound frozen whole green beans

1 cup cashew halfs

3 teaspoons honey

2 tablespoons butter

Salt and pepper

Boil a pot of water, and dump the thawed beans in for just a minute or two, till they start to give a little but are still crunchy. Strain them in a colander, and quickly dump into a bowl of cold water. In a skillet, heat the butter on medium heat, and sautee the cashews by pushing them around in the hot butter. Slowly mix in the honey, being careful not to burn it. When the nuts are coated with honey and nicely toasted, drain the beans and dump them into the skillet. Toss them around until they’re coated with the honey-nut mixture, add salt and pepper, and serve. This takes something gross (green beans) and combines it with something delicious (cashews and honey) to make a vegetable that almost anyone can eat without making a face.

Entrée: Some Sort of Fish

If this plan didn’t sound like faking it before, it kicks into high-gear now. Go to a local high-class yuppy market or caterer. Buy a few of the tastiest-looking fish entrées, maybe some nice salmon, maybe some halibut. Bring it home, destroy all bags, containers, and packages, and transfer the fish to a baking dish of your own. Put it in the oven on low heat “just to keep things warm.” Now it looks like you made this delicious fish! Way to go; you’re a regular gourmet!

The logic here is twofold. First, the entrée is the most important part of the meal. Even if your sides suck, people will remember the entrée. If it’s not edible, they’ll go home hungry and cranky. Furthermore, entrées are difficult to make. They require the kind of culinary skill that you probably lack if you’re reading this book. However, opening your wallet and purchasing something supertasty? That requires nothing but money, and you’ve got that! Plus, it saves preparation time, so go catch up on your Blossom reruns.

 

Dessert is the most crucial part of the meal, and it’s where you’ll really seal whether or not you get to spend the rest of the evening with your guest. Pull out all the stops with something impressive looking but easy to make. Nothing fits this bill quite like:

Chocolate Bowls with Berries and Cream

1 bag good-quality chocolate chips

Strawberries

Blueberries

Raspberries

Whipped cream

Water balloons (really)

Blow up ten or fifteen of the water balloons with your mouth. In a microwave-safe bowl, nuke the chocolate chips for a minute and half. When you take them out, stir with a spatula. As you stir, they should start to melt into one big bowl of semihot liquid chocolate. Put some wax paper on a cookie sheet. Now, hold a balloon by the knot and dip the opposite end into the bowl of chocolate. Roll backward and forward, then right to left, until the bottom end of the balloon has a small layer of chocolate on it. Pick up, and set top-down on the wax paper with the knot straight up in the air. Keep doing this until you’re out of chocolate. Put the cookie sheet in a fridge or freezer and let sit for four to five hours. Once the chocolate cools and hardens, use a pin to pop the balloons. Then, gently peel out the balloon, which should come pretty easily. You now have an edible bowl made of chocolate. You have to make quite a few to get a couple of pretty ones, but these are easy and superimpressive. Fill with the berries and cream and serve.

Remember to allot yourself a couple hours from cooking to dinner. If you rush it, people will be able to tell because you’ll be sweating, and your apron will be burning. “On fire? Me? No, it’s just really bright in here. What’s that? No, I did not cook human flesh for dinner. Actually, can you excuse me? I have to run into my swimming pool at full speed now.”

 

QUICK TIP: No matter how delicious it is, nobody wants to eat food cooked in a garbage can. Yes, even if you rinsed it out first.

Kitchen Gadgets to Impress People

Cooking is like Cartesian philosophy: Perception is reality. Even if you don’t really know what you’re doing, stocking your kitchen with the right gadgets can make people think you do.


Fancy kitchen gadgets like whisks are great to have around, but don’t defend against flames very well. Instead, try water.

Appreciating Aprons

You may think they’re feminine, but wearing an apron is far better than having flour all over your shirt when your guests arrive. Shell out a few bucks for a decent apron, but make sure it’s fairly plain. Monochromatic or something with a stripe or two isn’t bad. Anything too fancy will make you look like a lonely homemaker who spends hours shopping for aprons. Anything with a slogan like “Kiss the Cook” will make you look like a sad suburban dad whose grilling skills can’t make his kids love him. “Hail to the Chef,” on the other hand, is classy as all hell.


Though slightly emasculating, aprons are a great way to ensure you don’t get food on your chest and thigh area.

Learn to Play One Song

People are impressed by musical abilities. Sometimes parties will have stray guitars or pianos, and a partygoer will wow everybody with his acoustic version of the Mario theme song or a piano version of the acoustic version of the Mario theme song. That could have been you. Instead, you are standing in the back throwing turnips at people, like some sort of Luigi.

You may think without the necessary ten years of lessons and five years of jamming that you don’t have the necessary skills it takes to play a couple songs on the piano or guitar. And you are right. But you don’t need to play a couple songs, you just need to play one.

Any moron with opposable thumbs can spend a couple of days perfecting one song on the piano or guitar. You’ll probably need an actually talented friend to teach you how to play that particular song. When party time rolls around feel free to preach what you’ve practiced. As people scream for an encore simply refuse. Tell them the party isn’t “about you.” Tell them you could “play all night if you had to” but that wouldn’t be fun for anybody. This will come off as modesty and will impress people even more than the song did.

Congrats, Beethoven, you left them wanting more. Little do they know you have nothing left to give.