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

I do this a lot but no one ever reciprocates apart from one group of older friends. I love hosting and making people feel welcome. I also love mixing people who I think will get on well.

Oh and I forgot, people are all just so busy and tired. Can’t be arsed to start cooking for other people on a Friday night. Can barely be arsed to feed myself!

I think it’s numerous factors which have combined:
More people living in smaller houses/back with parents due to COL
Cost of food has shot up and made hosting a lot more expensive
Its not a child friendly event and many people can’t easily find or afford babysitters
Many people with restricted diets, allergies (and some just fussiness)
People are much more flaky, I hate this but since Covid nobody seems to be able to commit to a social engagement anymore.

Everything on Instagram/SM reflects this and has moved away from formal dining at home. Yes there’s still a lot of show of “entertaining” but it’s family-style, grazing boards for parties, BBQs in the garden in the summer or a big pot of chilli and jackets in the winter, with a ramshackle “more the merrier, turn up when you like” kind of vibe and for younger families it almost always involves having the kids in tow. People used to put their kids to bed and go to a dinner party at their friends house and now I think that would be quite unusual, if we are hosting friends with kids they will come over around 3-4pm and we’ll do a garden BBQ or something and the kids will play and the adults drink and chat. Many of our close friends live quite far away so they stay over, the kids have sleepovers in each others rooms etc.

Tight budget during my 20s/30s and have been cooking daily from scratch while working full time, for 26 years for my family of DH plus 6 kids (now down to three at home) and three Grandchildren. I or DH still cook Sun-Thursday without fail.

Now at 50 on anFriday/Saturday the last thing I feel like doing is cooking for anyone, let alone friends.
Plus we are, comparatively, minted now, so I always suggest meals /drinks out with friends. They are in same situation with adult kids, mortgage paid off, both working etc.

Even some Sundays with all the family- we are 12/13 at times, and on occasion I just cannot be arsed so I suggest going out for a carvery or a pub lunch.

Two of our couple friends do not cook well either - and having lost a lot of weight I want whatever I stick in my mouth to be delicious and worth the Calories.
The type of things they cook are what I would serve up on a Tuesday evening with my eyes closed on auto pilot and to be honest when push comes to shove I’d rather give a miss. So many lovely restaurants and delivery options now and that feels much more of a treat for me than ‘chicken in sauce’ or a ‘lamb tagine’. The worst are ‘curry nights with all
the trimmings’- total shudder, when we have two of the most exquisite Indian restaurants in our area. That also saves you having to pretend the stringy chicken sub standard curry lovingly slaved over -usually by the male in the couple- is ‘authentic and best ever eaten l’ etc etc.

I will never stop putting healthy delicious food out on a week night /Sunday for my family but cooking for fun to entertain my friends - nah been there done that when had no other options. Restaurants and pub for me all the way now.
plus you can sud off home when has enough and no washing up.

We used to do it but then everyone had kids and it stopped. Soon the kids will be old enough to fend for themselves for a few hours and I’m hoping it resumes.

I dont do dinner parties but I like to do a brunch on Sunday.
Usually about 10 or 12 people come over plus my adult sons.
I usually do it about once every 6 weeks.

This may be slightly cynical. I wonder if the art of talking to others for several hours without the support of a screen or device is a declining art. Also dinner parties were a bit of an aspiration in our day, whereas lifestyles seem to have changed and not conducive to living with one's parents or house-sharing in to your 30s.

I’ve never really thought about this, but this rings true with my group of friends!
We became a solid group when I was about 24, I’m 36 now. There’s seven of us girls in the group. I’d say from being 24 to 32, we used to go round to each others houses and take it in turns to cook CONSTANTLY. Like every couple of weeks. The host would cook a delish three course meal for the rest of us.
But thinking on it now, I honestly can’t remember the last time we did this. Now we just eat out. I don’t think we’ve done the home cooking now for a good four years. But it’s not something we ever discussed or purposely called time on, we’ve just got out of the habit. And I hadn’t even noticed until I read your thread!
I wonder for us personally if we just had a bit more time on our hands and less responsibility in our 20s, whereas now a lot of the group have young kids or are progressing in careers and becoming busier, and the thought of hosting six other women for a three course meal feels a bit much, and it’s easier to just go out. Interesting!

I stopped doing it when we had kids. 20 years later I haven't resumed it.

Suspect you don’t have the right friends. I’ve been attending and hosting “dinner parties” if you can call it that since I was 14 and still do now.

I think this was popular in the 70s and 80s but has really gone out of fashion.

Nobody I know hosts dinner parties other than the odd BBQ or Sunday roast. I love cooking and hosting so I find it a bit sad!

I invited friends for a Chinese meal for Chinese New Year and I got some comments saying it was “weird” and “old fashioned” - as well as some echoing what some other posters have said about feeling uncomfortable eating at someone’s house, being fussy eaters, etc. One friend said her and her husband would prefer to go out drinking. It’s a shame I think, it doesn’t have to be formal.

I would never host a dinner party as I'm not a confident enough cook and all my friends have beautiful houses, whereas ours is scruffier as we don't have the funds to do much to it! We don't own enough of the required matching plates etc either.

I've also heard too many jokes along the lines of 'How do you ensure no one wants to come to yours for dinner... just tell them you're vegetarian!', which puts me off further (I am vegetarian!).

There are lots of lower effort ways to socialise which are more fun.

I used to do this more when we lived in the UK, but seeing what seems to be on this thread as fine dining, then no. It was always inviting friends round for the evening meal, probably upped a bit for the occasion.

We don’t do this. Our group has young kids, no time, and too tired to host dinners for groups of people. I would prefer to eat out, let someone cook and deal with the mess and take the kids out.

you must have no kids/ retired op?

I still have people over for food, but I was never of the ‘dinner party’ persuasion. It’s usually just one course and cheese and tons of wine. But I definitely went through a phase of not doing it, when DS was little and the whole clearing up/planning/cooking/while doing everything around bedtime just didn’t seem like fun.

I don’t enjoy hosting dinner parties therefore don’t accept invites as reciprocity is expected. I’d rather meet at a neutral place like a restaurant, etc

Not sure when you were a young professional OP?

Some people (like me) have never been involved in rounds of dinner parties.

Some people (like my dd) enjoy cooking and enjoy having people round, and still do this.

I doubt there is a demise in numbers, although I suspect there are probably more people that entertain less formally than a dinner party might have been in the 1970s.

Me too! Hate cooking, hate eating out or at other people's houses. Quite happy with toast for dinner. On the rare occasions that I do have people round, I serve pizza which is basically just fancy toast.

I'd prefer to meet friends for a coffee and a walk. I think we all feel that it's a lot of effort catering for people and in our 50s nobody wants to eat 3, or even 2 course meals anymore. We've spent years cooking for our families and prefer our social time to be a bit more relaxed.

We still have people round but as per PP it tends to be for BBQ or a roast, rather than formal sit down dinners (other than Xmas and Easter when we do 3 courses plus cheese!) because these are meals most people will eat, that are easy to adapt to dietary requirements and that don’t take too much effort to clean up afterwards. They can also be done on a budget, whereas the last time we made a 3 course meal with beef Wellington for 8 people it cost well in excess of £200…

I think COVID put a dent in it, but also, a lot of my friends are on fairly restrictive diets which is fine for just a couple of people but tricky when the food has to be vegan, nut-free, not ultra-processed, low-carb, suitable for diabetics, gluten-free, without anything fermented, low-FODMAP and without citrus.

We have friends/family over to eat at least twice a month, sometimes more like twice a week.

We’re early 30’s in London and I don’t know anyone (even those gifted eye watering deposits) who has a dining room.

We like cooking - but everyone sits on assorted chairs round our too small table in our kitchen. We can host 8 at a push - but it’s not an elegant dining experience.

We used to have people around. Nowadays, by the time I’ve cooked for one vegan, one vegetarian, one no-aioli and one no-fish in my family (broadly speaking, each have additional limitations), it’s exhausting to think of accommodating other people’s preferences and fancies too.