Home entertaining might be becoming ever-more relaxed – but there are still unwritten codes of conduct
Forget the Office for National Statistics or YouGov surveys. For the real measure of the country, the seismographic survey of its changing interests and beliefs, we need look no further than the Waitrose Cooking Report. All human life is here, or at least all the middle- and upper-middle-class British bits of it. The cross-section of the population that always – somewhere at the back of the pantry, I’m sure we do – has harissa to hand.
From this year’s edition, it’s clear that home entertaining is becoming ever-more relaxed. But as anyone who has tried to dress for a “business casual” office knows, a lack of formality does not mean there aren’t still rules. If anything, the new world is even more complicated, governed by codes and norms that are no less strict for their invisibility. Some of these trends were already underway, but they have been sped up by Covid, while the horrifying price of food and energy means it is more important than ever to focus on the important things as host.
Namely…
1. The dread “dinner party”. Terminology is vital. More than a third of the respondents to the Waitrose survey said that “dinner party” was an old-fashioned term, while roughly the same number said they wanted their gatherings to feel “effortlessly casual”. In 2023, nobody will admit to going to a dinner party, such is the terror occasioned by the term. Dinner party implies a shirt with buttons on it, a bottle of rioja, conversation about the Succession theme music. You’d sooner volunteer for Guantanamo. Of course you are still having a dinner party, and deep down everyone knows that, but you must camouflage it as much as possible. Call it supper?