To wonder if quality home cooking for friends is a lost art?

Haven't done this for a long while now, either as host or guest. Since lockdowns etc it seems people actually visiting homes in person has reduced as well.

Children come too. Obviously we finish earlier than we would without them, but you can still have a nice evening.

I used to love hosting dinner parties for friends but I honestly can’t afford to do it anymore

Phew yes that’s hugely expensive! 🙀 Yes agree- if I had to pay that I’d prioritise date nights just with my DH/someone’s wedding etc. That makes total sense.

I know one couple who swapped with another couple they knew well for free babysitting, but it does all get more unreliable when the babysitters also have children…as we all know they can go down with illness last min on the day 🙈

Family on hand would certainly help - our last night out cost over £100 for the babysitter and honestly I don’t think any friend’s cooking is worth that investment!

Our children stay overnight at my Mum’s, or she babysits here.

We have found though that now they are 6 and 3 we can get away with hosting once they are in bed, either at ours or a friend’s if we all stay. So we hosted a dinner, drinks and board games gathering recently whilst ours were asleep upstairs. They also slept through a dinner, drinks and karaoke party at a friend’s.

Depends on availability of family babysitters/how well children sleep/age of children.

We definitely do it less often, and do more of the getting together over lunch type stuff, but it has been fun to get back to some evening bits too.

Are people with young DC (ie not old enough to be left alone without a babysitter) hosting or attending dinner parties?

I think that’s what killed it off for us - all the people I might invite for dinner had children, as did we, snd it became easier to socialise in different ways (invite the whole family over during the day, or DH or I to go out solo with our own friends.

The idea of paying a babysitter £££ to pop round to someone else’s house for the evening has never seemed like a good investment I guess!

How is everyone else managing it or are you simply not doing it when you have children aged 0-14?

I think the point is, you like hosting, and you are "enjoying planning what to cook". Lots of people don't.
If you want to do that, because that is something you enjoy doing, then do so, but you can't expect other people to want to do all that work, just because you like doing it.

We like hosting but have had enough of friends who don’t reciprocate. Now we just invite the 2 couples who do.

1 couple is coming over next week. I’m enjoying planning what to cook.

Oh yes, I'm terribly lazy about bothering to dress up! When I'm hosting I'm always too busy cooking to get all fancy. And other people don't seem that bothered either.

My parents used to do this. I didn’t get the impression that my mum enjoyed it much though. All the work used to fall to her and she’d typically spend the day beforehand moaning and swearing about what a tip the house was, how she wished whoever it was wasn’t coming, etc.

I’m afraid I’m not dissimilar and so just don’t invite people as it doesn’t feel like it’s expected anymore. I feel like my cooking isn’t really up to scratch (probably true) and know I’d find the whole thing really stressful.

In my broader circle, we absolutely used to do dinner parties LOADS in our 20s. But as children came along, it got more complicated - babysitters, bed time routines, general exhaustion etc.

As the kids have got older, we've got back into entertaining more often but it does tend to be more informal - Friends (and their kids) come over for supper on a Friday night or a BBQ/Sunday lunch.

I love cooking so even for these more informal events I put effort in to make interesting meals, but the thought of a formal dinner party now leaves me largely cold. The sheer effort of making space, seting tables, navigating around the children etc... it's too much. I don't have time to spend all day pottering in the ktichen preparing for a dinner party, which I would have done in the past. Also, if th echildren are coming along as well, that limits how many people we can host at a time.

Finally, there IS a cost implication. The reality is that a full three course meal for 6 -12 adults (plus, possibly, food for children) is expensive these days. It's hard to justify that.

Nobody even comes over never mind for food post covid.

I love to entertain, but I am getting fed up with endless catering to dietary restrictions. If I am doing a fancy meal then it's nice to do meat or fish; lots of versions of those are special occasion type food. But so often there are one or two people who end up dictating things.

I like cooking and eating veggie food, I just get bored of being restricted to it so often.

But I still do it. It's noticeable that it's the older friends who do a 'proper' meal. The entertaing style is definitely more casual these days. But I do eat plenty of nice meals in other people's houses!

I think the dinner party just evolves. I suspect there were lots of casual dos in the past too, they just aren't as interesting to write about as full Steak Diane affairs.

I’m also 62 and we used to do this a lot in the 80s and 90s but we stopped, no idea why as I used to enjoy it.

Age and Stage perhaps?

Easier to spend the day cooking when you don't have kids to entertain.

We do still cook for friends jbut it's a bigger juggle than pot luck x

I agree, OP. I don't know how people afford to regularly eat out and have takeaways.

I love having people over for meals - and I'm a good basic cook who takes care over ingredients, but not a Cordon Bleu standard. I'm not Hyacinth Bucket either - it's very informal - we don't have posh china crockery. A delicious home-made lasagne, cottage pie (you might laugh but in my experience people love this in winter), fish pie or Boeuf Bourgignon with potato gratin goes down brilliantly. Yes, the downside is tidying the house, but it's good for me - it spurs me to do a bit more than the usual cursory run over with the vac.

I rarely eat out now, and usually it's someone else's idea. More than half the time I'm disappointed or even resentful about the quality of the food and it's just SO expensive! Plus - I find formality of any kind challenging and I hate the fussing you get in restaurants.

It's so expensive these days. I have health issues so physically find it difficult / impossible to do.

And those of you saying 'three course', I used to do five as standard.

Now the only person I cook for is my dad when he visits, I do three courses for him because he wouldn't manage 5 and he claims he is 'spoiled' when he visits.

Yes please! Sounds like my 1970s dinner parties. Rarely do anything like that now, as you say, it seems to have fallen out of fashion. Also, as we've got older, a three-course meal is just too much food, I can't manage more than two at most.

Interesting thread. I much prefer a casual buffet style party with friends - mostly because being served formally at the table feels weird to me. Plus formal dinner parties one person (too often the woman) ends up skivvying in the kitchen and you don’t get to see them much. Whereas we will put a big pan of chilli, rice, salad on the table, everyone fills a bowl and sits around chatting.
also babysitters are so expensive so we always have people round with all their kids, not adult only, so this style works much better.

We still have friends over for dinner regularly & they all reciprocate. It’s something we’ve always done. We did it round a firepit in the garden when Covid allowed.

Yes! Karaoke has made a hilarious come back I our crowd too. So much silly fun!

I expect it's less common for a variety of reasons, including -

Food is expensive

People working longer hours

Shift towards prioritising family over socialising as adults only

Casual lifestyles, not wanting to dress up

Casual dining, not 3 courses

Dietary requirements / expectations that the host will cater. Years ago, I did a meal for 8 guests. I served a ready meal to one of them, but now I'd feel pressure to cook a proper meal to accommodate their diet

Many people's social lives shrank during Covid

Focus on "my little family" rather than wider community

People are stressed and less inclined to put themselves out there

Dinner parties for friends are fun for extroverts. Introverts now more confident to say they don't enjoy it

Well, I was responding to the part of her post that complained about having to ‘sit up straight and say please and thank you’ if eating at at other people’s houses, which suggested that her normal behaviour is different.