CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS A DINNER PARTY?

Before committing yourself to our dinner party blueprint, you should first figure out if the gathering you plan to host is, in fact, a dinner party. Because while the definition of a dinner party may self-evidently seem to be “a party which occurs over dinner,” the truth, as with most things of world-shaking importance, is a little more complex. For example:

• Is it a dinner party if you’re eating at 4 p.m.?

• Is Passover seder a dinner party?

• What if the food is takeout pizza and the booze comes in shiny twelve-ounce pull-tab cans with a contest advertised on the back?

These are all potentially swell gatherings. But none of them are dinner parties, and in this chapter, we’re going to tell you why.

PART 1: MINIMUM STANDARDS

Below are the internationally recognized standards which define the modern dinner party, as put forth by the UN Nutrition and Reverie Commission’s Subcommittee on Common Sense. A.k.a. us. In ensuing chapters, you’ll see, we advocate a casual disregard for many rules. But a true dinner party must at least adhere to these basic standards for it to qualify for the revolution.

PURPOSE

1. The purpose of throwing a dinner party is to have dinner and to party.

A dinner party must have no agenda other than this. As explained in the MANIFESTO, our lives are already planned enough; the dinner party is a space for spontaneity. It is, as we will remind you several more times throughout the course of this tome, recess for adults. When you were a kid, did you actually plan to get beaten up at recess? No! It just kind of happened. Dinner parties are like that, except instead of randomly getting beaten up, random fun occurs.

TIME

1. Weekday dinner parties must begin after 5 p.m.

A true dinner party begins after the typical workday has ended, i.e., no earlier than 5 p.m. This is so a maximum number of invitees can actually attend.

It’s also because a dinner party should be a celebration of time away from work. Not a burden that forces guests to abandon work early, fight rush hour traffic, and then spend the whole party worrying about the work they didn’t do.

In fact, rule of thumb: Begin the party a half hour later than your town’s typical rush hour ends. So, for instance, in Los Angeles, that’d be about midnight.

2. Weekend dinner parties must also begin after 5 p.m.

This allows enough time for the following:

a) For hosts to sleep late, and then clean the bathroom for the party.

b) For guests to sleep late, do one chore, and then do something fun, productive, or otherwise excellent for themselves before the party (e.g., hiking, sex, sitting quietly and enjoying trees).

c) For guests to buy some booze to bring to the party.

Another reason dinner parties happen after 5 p.m. is because that’s when dinner happens, guys.

3. There is no standard end time for a dinner party.

You’re thinking of children’s parties. Those have end times so parents know when to pick up their kids from your house, with a few hours to spare to get them ready for bed.

A grown-up may also have a bedtime, but the awesome part about being a grown-up is you’re allowed to blow it off. A dinner party is only over when the last guest leaves/drunkenly stumbles into a cab.

3a. HOWEVER, if some or all of your dinner party guests end up sleeping over, then the party officially ends at dawn. In other words, the ensuing gathering the next morning is no longer a dinner party. It is breakfast. With a very real danger (due to the proximity of leftover food and booze) of brunch breaking out. Be on guard.

DAY OF THE WEEK

1. Dinner parties must NOT be held on Sundays, Mondays, or Tuesdays.

You and/or at least some of your guests have to work on Monday. Not even the most magical Sunday night party can make someone forget how much that sucks. Don’t bother trying.¹

As for Monday nights, they are for doing stuff you thought you’d do over the weekend, but didn’t, because it felt too much like work. Like paying bills, or writing a book about dinner parties.

Tuesday nights are just kind of dumb.

2. Fridays and Saturdays are the optimal nights for a dinner party.

Both Fridays and Saturdays are part of that brief weekend window during which you can trick yourself into thinking you’ve escaped the rat race. Each is also followed by a convenient twenty-four to forty-eight-hour hangover/humiliation recovery period.

Be aware, however, that for these very reasons, 50 to 100 percent of your friends will be throwing various types of parties on Friday or Saturday nights. Competition for guests will be fierce. Therefore:

3. Wednesday and Thursday night dinner parties are encouraged.

By Wednesday or Thursday night, it’s been long enough since you’ve been at a party to feel like being at another one. And partying on a “school night” is a great way to celebrate the freedoms of adulthood.

What’s more, a great Wednesday or Thursday night dinner party can effectively “front-load” your weekly allotment of social time. This leaves you Friday and Saturday night to read, relax, or fall down an Instagram hole while everyone else sits in traffic on their way to parties.

4. Holidays

Parties held during the week preceding a major national holiday are not dinner parties. They are holiday parties (see part two, subsection “Holiday Parties”).

LOCATION

1. For the time being, a dinner party must happen on the planet Earth.

We cannot advocate the consumption of large quantities of wine in the zero gravity environment of the International Space Station.

2. A dinner party must be held at a private residence.

Or a public residence, if your home is the White House. ’Cause, hey, you spent a lot of money in order to live there.

Now then: why a private residence, as opposed to a public spot? Partly because the cops are a lot less likely to intervene if anyone gets loud or naked. But also because welcoming non-family-members into your home is the most civilized of all possible acts. When Thorag invited Grunt over for pterodactyl sous vide, trusting that Grunt would not club him in the face and then eat Thorag’s wife, Lauren—well, that was a big step for mankind. As best-selling author and military documentarian Sebastian Junger once told us on our show,

Humans are the only species in which a young male (or female, for that matter)… will sacrifice his own life defending a peer he is not related to.

Swap “sacrifice his own life defending” with “give his last piece of roast beef to,” and you’ve got the idea. Being a host to your pals = humanity.

To summarize thus far: A dinner party is a gathering held on Earth, after 5 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays, in someone’s home, at which pterodactyl is served. Speaking of which:

FOOD

1. A proportion of the food at a dinner party must be homemade.

Not cooking for your own dinner party is like DJ-ing a dance party with the radio. As clearly stated in our MANIFESTO, the point of a dinner party is to revel in unique, gloriously imperfect humanity. Your humanity. Expressing your taste, your style, and your essence, with food you prepared with your own hands, is part of what makes this deal so important.

The preparation of food also serves as the narrative spine of your event: cooking, serving, and cleanup are the three acts of your gathering. Without them, a dinner party is a movie without a plot. That only works for Richard Linklater.

2. The 51 percent rule.

DON’T WORRY. We acknowledge the distractions and pressures of the modern world, where whole seasons of binge-worthy TV shows are released daily, and where your boss can text you work tasks even while you’re in labor. You may not have a ton of extra time to cook a multicourse meal. Therefore, a gathering is a dinner party as long as at least 51 percent of the dishes served are made at home.

This means that yes, you can serve a bunch of killer tamales you ordered from that great Mexican place down the street. But you must additionally prepare a salad and your mother’s special queso recipe. And bake cookies for dessert or something. Also:

3. Hide the packaging.

At a true dinner party, all non-homemade food is removed from its packaging. If you serve the tamales straight out of the giant foil pan in which they were delivered, for instance, that’s not a dinner party, that’s a feeding trough. Just put the tamales on some kind of serving dish, would you? Even piling them up on a dinner plate like a meat-and-masa ziggurat is acceptable.

This rule goes double for food packaging emblazoned with a corporate logo. Remember, dinner parties are a respite from advertising. Your dining room is not a billboard, and your gathering is not a Hollywood blockbuster—this is no time for product placement.

ENVIRONMENT

1. Mandatory table.

For a gathering to qualify as a dinner party, there must be a table present.

1a. The table’s purpose is to force the entire group to converse together; therefore, attendees must actually be seated around it while dining.

2. A dinner party is an A/V-free zone.

All audiovisual electronic equipment within twenty-five yards of a dinner party must be switched off—except for the minimum amount necessary to play music. The goal is to keep visual distractions to a minimum so the focus is on the humans sitting in front of you.

Thus, your television is subject to the same rule that applies to you when visiting your attractive doctor: It should not be turned on. A Super Bowl viewing party is not a dinner party.

Cell phone usage should be tightly policed. A quick hourly check of mail/messages is cool, but guests attempting to launch YouTube (see box “A History of Threats: What the Dinner Party Has Survived”) should be denied food/booze and mocked until they desist. Otherwise your dinner party will quickly become a YouTube party.

For the same reason, laptops are verboten unless they are your music source.

Also, disable all Roombas. They’re cute—everyone will look at them.

3. A dinner party can be held outside.

Among the most iconic dinner parties ever is the alfresco gathering in Fellini’s Italian cinema classic 8½.² Indeed, between April and August in many European countries, dinner parties are held indoors only in the event of hail or war. So by all means, set up a table in the backyard! Just take care you’re not accidentally throwing a barbecue, which is a totally different thing (see part two, subsection “Outdoor Barbecues”).

ATTENDEES

1. The four-to-twelve rule.

To qualify as a dinner party, your guest list must include at least four people but no more than twelve. That’s including you, the host.

Two people is just dinner: quiet and comfortable. It’s a pair of friends sharing a meal. It’s you and your spouse catching up after a long day. Add a third person, and there’s a tendency for things to turn into something more like therapy than a party. It’s a sympathetic couple keeping their sad single friend sane. Or three single friends venting about condescending couples.

Four people can comprise a dinner party, unless the attendees are two couples, in which case it’s no longer a dinner party and becomes a double date (see part two, subsection “Double Dates”).

As for a guest list of more than twelve people? You’ll have a hard time fitting them all around one table. It’ll get too loud for everyone to ever share one conversation. And making enough salad for that many guests is going to give your salad-tossing arm carpal tunnel. If your guest list exceeds twelve people, just put out cheese and crackers and call your gathering a plain old party, which is what it is.

2. Family members: The 25 percent rule.

As clearly stated in our MANIFESTO, dinner parties are an essential means of maintaining and cultivating friendships outside your family. Therefore, your gathering is not a dinner party if more than 25 percent of the attendees are your relatives. Family gatherings can be great, but at a dinner party the majority of guests should be there because they choose to be—not because they’re obligated due to shared DNA.

Also, an overabundance of family members runs counter to the spirit of unencumbered, free-flowing conversation that is central to a dinner party. Which sibling did Mom love best? Why do you always get your way? Who punched the dachshund that one time? Such questions lurk beneath a family gathering like the NSA lurks beneath your web browser. Better to leave this Freudian morass for Thanksgiving.

PART 2: WHAT IS NOT A DINNER PARTY

Now that we have laid out the above standards, which are absolutely immutable laws of the universe except when they’re not (see part three, “Exceptions”), let’s apply them to a series of other types of social gatherings, as a means to explain why they are not dinner parties.

DINING OUT WITH FRIENDS

Surely meeting a bunch of people at a restaurant qualifies as a dinner party, right? You’ve got tables, food, a dining area free of TV sets, and many restaurants don’t even open until 5 or 6 p.m., in observation of the Time rule above.

But remember: zero percent of the food on a restaurant table was cooked at home, a violation of the Food rule (part one, subsection “Food”).

And more importantly, dining at a restaurant is not an intimate demonstration of the human capacity for civility (as outlined in the Location rule [part one, subsection “Location”]). It is a public act in a place of business. Which is also anathema to the true, dinner party–style spontaneity we articulated in our MANIFESTO. Can you tell your server to crank up the music, dude, because this is your jam? Can you break out a Yahtzee board at the restaurant? Can you play a tepid round of strip poker, or even an ironic game of quarters?

If you’re in a restaurant, and the answers to the above questions are all “Yes,” you may be confusing the café attached to your youth hostel with a restaurant. Neither can house a dinner party.

POTLUCKS/BUFFETS

A potluck or buffet is almost a dinner party. But it is disqualified because the dining table is typically completely covered with platters of food. This forces guests to eat while standing, in violation of the Environment rule (part one, subsection “Environment”).

A standing party discourages shared group conversation of more than a few people. It also makes eating a chore. In France (a founding member and cochair of the International Dinner Party Security Council), holding a plate of salmon and couscous for hours, unable to actually eat it because you’re holding a drink in your other hand, is considered torture—a crime punishable by making you hold a plate of salmon and couscous for hours while holding a drink in your other hand.

Note, however, that if there are two tables present at the buffet—one upon which food is placed, and another around which guests sit and eat—then this is not in fact a buffet. It’s a dinner party with too much food for one table. Well done!

OUTDOOR BARBECUES

What’s not to love about barbecues? Charred meat, swimming, day drinking, sunshine, day drinking, and day drinking. Unfortunately, the “sunshine” part means that a barbecue generally happens before 5 p.m., in clear violation of the Time rule (part one, subsection “Time”). And one doesn’t tend to eat around a table at a barbecue, unless you consider the lip of a swimming pool a table.

As for day drinking, that sounds dangerously brunchy to us.

Furthermore, while dinner parties can be casual affairs, barbecues take it a step further: people wander randomly in and out of the house; squirt guns are tolerated at the table; it’s totally acceptable to eat while wearing sunglasses. If dinner parties are concerts, a barbecue is more like a jam session. Of course, if you’re into jam bands, you’re now confused, because “jam” and “concert” mean exactly the same thing to you. But you likely also think peanut butter and honey sandwiches are a main course—so we’re not sure dinner parties are your vibe anyway.

Tip: Barbecues can be fine places to recover from dinner parties.

PICNICS

Picnics tend to happen in public spaces, in violation of the Location rule (part one, subsection “Location”).

Picnics also don’t have tables. To which you might understandably exclaim, “Wait! Then what the hell do you call a PICNIC TABLE?” To which we reply: “Picnic table” is an oxymoron, along the lines of “vodka martini,” “holy war,” and “bad sex.” A true picnic happens not around a table, but on the ground. On a blanket. With your friends. Whereas so-called picnic tables are what you carve your initials into while eating smashed, disturbingly warm ham sandwiches outside a public rest area in the midst of a road trip with your parents. Or the thing upon which you eat cold fried chicken while trying to avoid getting beaned with Frisbees at your nephew’s birthday party in the park.

We can imagine a dinner party consisting of a gathering of friends in a private backyard, arranged around a picnic blanket which symbolically serves as a table. But for the most part, picnics aren’t dinner parties; they are the little sister of barbecues.

P.S.: We have yet to see a portable wet bar that does the job.

PIZZA PARTIES

In Food, above, we allowed for the presence of some non-homemade, delivered food at a party. But delivered pizza seems, to us, a special case.

Maybe it’s because, practically speaking, you pretty much have to serve pizza straight from the delivery box, in clear violation of the Food rule (part one, subsection “Food”), which requires you to remove premade food from its container. Of course, you might happen to have multiple extra-large pizza trays in your house from which to serve the pizza. But seriously, what kind of person has multiple extra-large pizza trays in the house, when you can just serve pizza straight from the delivery box?

Maybe it’s because we can’t help but associate pizza with our earliest, not entirely sophisticated stabs at party throwing: junior high sleepovers at which everyone gorged on Domino’s, Jolt Cola, and Pringles till we threw up all over our Cracked magazines.

Whatever. Our position remains: A pizza party is not a dinner party. It’s the backup plan if you burn the homemade pizza you were making for the dinner party.

CLUB MEETINGS

A club meeting can look a lot like a dinner party. Example: Your book club comes over to meet at your pad. Everyone sits around your dining room table and consumes a tasty homemade dinner you prepared. Meanwhile, you all talk about books—sometimes even naughty ones. Sounds like a dinner party to us!

Except for the unfortunate fact that your gathering has a prearranged agenda, thereby violating the Agenda rule, a.k.a. THE FIRST RULE OF A DINNER PARTY.

At a dinner party, you can talk about anything. Whereas if some folks at the book club meeting grow weary of talking about books? Tough: You’re expected to talk about books anyway, because it’s a meeting of the book club.

Of course, you could decide to abandon your club agenda. And in the above scenario, the moment you do, you’ll be having a dinner party. At least until someone inevitably ruins everything by saying, “Wait a second: aren’t we supposed to be talking about The Goldfinch?”

Tip: Club meetings can create great conversation fodder to deploy later in the week, when you’re at an actual dinner party.

POKER NIGHTS

Though it takes place around a table at a buddy’s pad, usually on a weekend, sometimes with homemade food on hand… there is, alas, an agenda on poker night: to take your friends’ money while avoiding your family and masking your alcoholism as recreational drinking. Therefore, not a dinner party.

DOUBLE DATES

Again, even if your double date occurs in a private home over dinner, there is an agenda: to subtly flirt with your friend’s date, thereby reminding your own date that you are funny and attractive. Not a dinner party.

OSCAR PARTIES

Involves watching TV on a Sunday night. Serve all the fancy food and booze you want: it’s still not a dinner party.

HOLIDAY PARTIES

A holiday party cannot be a dinner party, even if you manage to avoid the many pitfalls that would immediately disqualify it.

Like, let’s assume yours is among the .0001 percent of holiday parties that is not a cheese-log-festooned buffet (see “Potlucks/Buffets,” above). Let’s also assume you’ve managed to throw this holiday party without inviting a large number of family members. And you’ve kept the guest list to a dozen or fewer people.

Firstly, dude, this is kind of a pathetic holiday party—where are all your friends and family, and where’s the cheese log buffet? And second, it’s still not a dinner party.

One of the main reasons to throw a dinner party is to make a typical week atypical. To add a night of bright spontaneity to the otherwise ho-hum workaday routine. Remember, as a kid, how excited you’d be for Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas? Some time off from schoolwork, lots of food, a chance to relax? That’s exactly how adults should feel before a dinner party.

But on actual Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, you don’t need to create that feeling. It’s already there. Parties, food, and relaxation are assumed. So to throw a dinner party during holiday season would be like taking your kids out for ice cream sundaes on Halloween. It’d be like having a birthday party on Christmas when you’re not Jesus. It’d be like taking a nap while napping.

Actually, nap napping sounds kind of great. But the point is, the presence of a holiday nullifies the dinner party–ness of a dinner party, and renders it simply a party that is happening on a holiday.

PASSOVER SEDER

Despite being a wonderful ritual, and despite taking place around a table over dinner, Passover seders are not dinner parties. They are a hybridization of holiday party and book club meeting, at which the agenda is to read and discuss the Haggadah.

We also cannot sanction as a dinner party any gathering at which heavenly brisket is sitting in the oven, like, ten feet away, but you’re not allowed to have any until you’ve sung one thousand verses of “Dayenu.”

PART 3: EXCEPTIONS

This is a party guide, not Apple’s Terms of Service. We are not unyielding corporate lawyers, although we do like their shoes. So let us ease your fears and acknowledge a few situations where the rules go out the window.

UNEMPLOYMENT/POVERTY

If you currently have little or no income, can barely afford food to cook, had to pawn your dinner table to make rent, and still want to have people over to eat a little something and converse? Then you are a hero trying to make the best of a dire situation, and you are free to do it any way you can manage.

Throw your dinner party anytime, on any day of the week you want. Sit on the floor dipping saltines into an open can of StarKist tuna, water down your last finger of Two-Buck Chuck so you have enough to pour each guest a juice glass full, and enjoy. Actually, write us, and we’ll contribute a paper tablecloth you can put down to keep from staining the rug. Godspeed to you!

Note: The unemployment exemption does NOT apply if you’re a member of the idle rich. Or if you’re, like, on unpaid summer hiatus from your lucrative gig as the showrunner of a hit TV sitcom. Yes, you’re not technically earning money, but you have it, cheater. Buy a freaking dinner table!

DORM ROOM/EFFICIENCY APARTMENT

If you reside in a space barely large enough to fit a bed, a microwave, a space heater, and a fire alarm, you are absolved from the need for a table. The point of the table is to get everyone huddled intimately together anyway, and you’ve accomplished this simply by squeezing them into your microscopic chicken pen of a home. This is also known as the I-Live-in-New-York-Paris-or-Amsterdam rule.

Since you have no kitchen, you are also absolved of having to serve homemade food, especially if you are a student dorm resident whose entire circle of friends also live in dorms, making it impossible to cook something in advance at one of their pads.

However, before serving, you must still remove food from its packaging. And your head and face from the hood of your sweatshirt.

FOREIGN COUNTRIES

The Time and Day rules can be flexible, depending on where you live.

Example 1: You live in Finland. It is late December and the sun doesn’t rise for months on end. To maintain a faint glimmer of joy in your dark existence, you need as many dinner parties in your life as possible. Go ahead and throw one on a Monday or Tuesday night. Please—we beg of you.

Example 2: In Spain, the central meal of your day occurs at noon, and you get several hours off to enjoy it. Thus a dinner party can conceivably be held in the middle of the day, and also, we’re jealous of you, and you’re the home of Bea, an exchange student with whom Brendan attended high school and who broke his heart, and look, Bea, now Brendan’s cowriting a book, so you and he should really catch up, and by the way he’s not allergic to ketchup anymore.