Hosting Guides

This is the how-much and the how-to. I run a venue, which means I set tables and feed groups most weekends, and most of what follows exists because I got it wrong first.

The numbers people most often want

Each of those has a page behind it: appetizers per person, the board shopping list and the board size guide.

The principle underneath all of it

The goal of hosting is not an impressive meal. It is being at your own table. Almost every piece of advice in this section is in service of that, and it is why the recommended menu structure is a starter made entirely in advance, one main course that sits in an oven, and a dessert made yesterday or bought.

Anything that needs plating at the last minute puts you in the kitchen during the part of the evening you invited people for. The full timeline is here, and it starts a week out.

The free upgrades

• Take cheese out of the fridge 45 minutes early. Cold suppresses aroma and stiffens texture. A mid-range cheese at room temperature beats an expensive one served cold.
• Set the table in the morning. Ten minutes, and you find out at 10am that you are two glasses short rather than at 7:15pm.
• Decant everything. Crisps in a bowl, dip out of the plastic pot. Six minutes of work that does more than an hour of cooking.
• Build a second board, do not top up the first. Swapping in a complete board resets the whole spread; adding cheese to a demolished one does not.

The guides here feed the rest of the site

If you are working out quantities, you are usually about to work out equipment. Dinner party essentials is the honest list of what to own — about eight things, and you probably have three. Everything outdoors changes because of materials and heat, which is outdoor entertaining, and holidays are ordinary hosting with the numbers doubled and the oven fully booked, which is holiday entertaining.