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

I know what you mean OP, we don't get many dinner party invites these days. But I don't mind that it's not reciprocated as I love cooking and hosting, and it gives me an excuse to make meals I can't normally make for just us.

Many people don't have the room for guests, can't afford it (cost of living...) or the energy to fine cook. Babysitters are expensive too (- they expect to be paid what most people earn before taxes).
in addition people eat very differently and expect to be catered for.

I'm not really surprised.

Ooh I also miss murder mystery parties! Where you play with 6-8 in between each course. Amazing costumes and accents, the excitement of discovering ‘you are the murderer’! Definitely an art to ensuring your guests are tipsy enough to embrace their part, but not so drunk they have no idea what’s going on 😂

Board games are also good, and more recently karaoke has made a massive comeback in our circles! One couple hosted a fabulous Eurovision party, we left children at GPs, so could stay overnight and were on the karaoke until 1am. Another friend had us stay over, did food first for the kids then proper adult food for us, extended drinks to other friends who came later. Incredibly all the kids slept through us on the karaoke until 2am (they do have a much bigger house than us, we would not get away with this! 😂) At almost 40, these are the best 2 parties I’ve been to in about 10 years 😂

I used to enjoy hosting dinner parties but not formal, we had a big kitchen with a 7 foot table I would make 3 courses, use a tablecloth, set the table nicely. We always enjoy having people for a meal, or going to theirs. I think of going out for a meal out as being something that you do with "less-close" friends. Plus the food can be mediocre/boring and expensive. I can't understand the poster who doesn't like entertaining or going to other people's houses.
I still like to cook for friends and use a recipe when we've got guests. - I work FT shifts but cook from scratch every day, or batch cook so I've got fresh home cooked stuff to take to work but I usually make it up from my head when it's just for us. We've downsized in the past two years but are getting a kitchen extension now to make it easier to have visitors + start cooking for guests more frequently again and I can't wait! 😁

Me and my partner at the time used to do this with one of his friends and his then partner, wasn’t always a dinner party as such but maybe every month or so we would go round to one of each others houses for dinner cook nice food and have drinks etc. He spilt up with his partner early part of Covid and then did it once with the new partner but the vibe was totally different and less relaxed having a laugh we just click as well, so I think it was more of the previous partner was pushing meet ups as well as we would see them a good few times a month.

I used to do it a lot and I enjoyed it back then - but it was a lot of work and I'm not up for that anymore.
My house needed to be cleaned & tidied, shopping and planning done and then the cooking and the hosting. I want to look forward to socialising and that does not include me doing hard labour 😁, money is not the limiting factor for me or my friends anymore so we eat out and if the food isn't great at least the company is and I have no washing up the next day..

I’m surprised people saying they did it in their 20s. In my 20s everyone was in house shares so there wasn’t the space or facilities to have dinner parties, and most people were skint at the start of their careers so no money or time to buy and prep fancy ingredients.

I’m mid 30s now and I’ve been invited for casual food gatherings like bbqs and nibbles but never the kind of thing you’re talking about. Doesn’t happen in my circle at all, it’s not something I’d ever do as I absolutely detest cooking. I also enjoy eating out and haven’t found the decline in quality you mention.

I think it might be a generational thing, I honestly can’t imagine anyone under 50 having the kind of dinner party you’re talking about!

I think this rings true. What's acceptable in terms of leaving kids now is quite different and few people have an easy babysitter.
Im sure people would just have left an 8 and 10yr old home on their own while they went to a friend's dinner party but I don't think many would think that acceptable now. Or a 14yr old babysitter would be hired for like a tenner. Now even a teenager would expect like £25-£30 to babysit so the whole thing becomes costly.

Yes we still do this. It's less formal than a 'dinner party' but we do make a lot of effort and there's usually a theme e.g. tapas, or dishes from a certain country or cuisine. I love sharing a meal with friends, it's my favourite thing to do.

Yes, that’s a good point about one person potentially being stuck in the kitchen unable to join in with the chat, which is very fun!

I admire cooks who are confident enough to cook whilst chatting. I don’t like cooking when guests are watching! 🙈😂 To get round this, I always choose a dessert I can make in advance ready in the fridge, I would also prep ahead anything I could for starter and main. Also I like big one-pot oven or slow cooker recipes. Even hosting a BBQ lunch I had my cous cous done the day before then panzanella made and Pimm’s prep on the morning, I like everything ready in the fridge and washing up all done ahead of people arriving. DH is an excellent cook and happy to be on main, I’m the chattier of us so I’m always more on meet and greet 😂

YANBU, especially if you don’t all have kids. When we hosted like that in our ‘20s we always properly cooked, at least 2 courses if not 3 for friends. A proper main based around quality meat/fish and a dessert made from scratch minimum. So did the rest of our friends.

I’ve done this and not done it. Most done before kids.
In my group we meet as just the women and so invites to someone’s house never went down well as night off meant we didn’t want kids or partners lurking.

now my kids are old enough to not want to be present my health and mental health couldn’t handle the pressures of cooking for a group sadly. Maybe again one day

I’m in my 40s and have never hosted or been to a dinner party. When friends have visited or I have visited friends we tend to either have a takeaway, go out or just have something quick and easy to eat while chatting. Surely the host spends most of the time in the kitchen and can’t enjoy the company?

YANBU. I made a post a few weeks/months ago asking if I was unreasonable for being miffed that a friend invites DH and I for dinner on a Fri/Sat night - we get dressed up, pay for a taxi etc. - and then they serve us oven pizza from the supermarket. I can’t remember what the end vote was but a LOT of people called me a snob and insisted they would be grateful if they got given beans on toast at a dinner party!

I’ve never enjoyed cooking and have never been invited to a dinner party either - it honestly doesn’t sound remotely enjoyable to me!

I’d rather meet friends for lunch, or, if money is tight, go for a walk with the dogs and grab a coffee instead.

When Jamie Oliver was in his heyday I was jealous of their life with informal meals where everyone just dived in. I’ve never had this type of friendship group, and now I’m a bit older I can see why. We have our own requirements and it’s too much to have to start thinking about others’ individual requirements. Even doing a vegetarian option is enough (happy to do this but just feel that I can’t cater for all tastes).

I would prefer a formal dinner party. I would find this just as stressful as an informal meal, so might as well do something special, and there’s a formula. The boozy parties of the 80s where people dressed up sound like a right laugh and it’s a shame that this doesn’t happen.

I have fallen out of love with cooking - my family see food as fuel and don’t seem to have good conversations at the dinner table. So I have no desire to do even more cooking.

I agree with the PPs about people being uncomfortable if you’ve gone to any trouble. And also the flakiness, especially if you’ve put in effort and/or spent a lot.

I also think that this reflects a broader trend, expedited by covid but not caused by it. I’m guilty of this too. It’s easier to eat simply and then settle in front of the TV in my pjs than it is to entertain or go out.

We did a lot of this with other couples/groups through our ‘20s. For us it has lessened as we’ve all had young children. I do enjoy and miss it though.

However, another thing that puts us of hosting is that one couple didn’t reciprocate invites, kept inviting themselves here and even expressed disappointment not to have been invited last Summer! My DH is very laid back, and a generous, excellent cook, but he’d had enough and said it really is their turn, which I agree with.

I think people are ruder as guests generally. We actually hosted a family for a BBQ lunch Saturday (school friend of DS’s). They were very late, which meant all the children were very hungry, and we didn’t appreciate their level of unhelpful interference and watching of both the cooking and washing up, which we both know exactly what we are doing with.

I said YABU because I think people can cook but they don't want to.

I'm brilliant at hosting dinner parties but it costs£££ and often isn't reciprocated. I may as well spend the £££ on a restaurant meal with friends and save myself the vast amount of time spent cleaning shopping and hosting. It's much more relaxing for me

Yes we do this all the time, not formal but good food with different groups of friends each returning the favour. But we also live somewhere with great restaurants so love to go out, but it is hugely expensive so a treat rather than a weekly thing.

Agree with all of this. My parents were constantly at dinner parties or hosting them in the 1980s....dad wore wear a suit, mum would dress up. I would find it really exciting and be allowed to come downstairs to say hello to their guests.... probably through a haze of cigarette smoke. Those were the days!

Yes I think it is a dying art op...and mainly imo because so many women work nowadays.

Dh has invited several couples we know round for lunch and I always cook...they reciprocate and invite us to theirs but never cook and instead take us out to a restaurant. I'm a sahm and in these situations both partners work long hours so I totally understand they don't want to spend hours in the kitchen cooking for guests.

I think the shoulder-pad, silk blouse, big hair, prawn cocktail fancy napkin dinner parties of the 80s had already disappeared by the early 2000s but you're right in that if they weren't dead already then social media would have killed them off.

imagine influencers doing dinner parties 😫
people would feel like they can't keep up!

I think they first disappeared because:

• people living in smaller and smaller properties - no room for a table let alone dining room
• people's friendship circle being splattered across counties
• decline in confidence of cooking (I wouldn't foist my cooking on anyone who was kind enough to visit me - I'm terrible)

I'd love for them to make a come back though... big hair and all. I always find it nostalgic looking through my mums old recipe books with soft focus photos of elaborately laid tables and whole roast duck etc

I have two groups of friends where we take turns to host things like this. One group with children so it’s much more informal unless it’s for a special celebration and they get babysat / farmed out to family for the night. And another group where I’m the only one with children - I can’t always go - but there are two couples in the group who love hosting and have large houses, so I go there every couple of months too. It’s lovely.

I do have memories of my parents having dinner parties a lot in the early 90s 😄

@Navyslug this is me exactly!

I'm with you.
Hosting dinner parties/,games nights or attending these would be my idea of hell. Thankfully none of my friends have any interest either..... and we"re not a bunch of miseries. Just not our thing.

If we're at Mil's for lunch she still serves us weird starters like griddled aubergine that are a throwback to her 70s dinner party hosting days.