Tell me about the worst dinner party you've ever been to

I heard a story about a dinner party for around 10 senior male professionals all in the same field, who all brought their wives. Very posh and all very nice.

One single, male guest arrived a little late and everyone was already seated. He walked into the dining room, took one look at the table and for some unfathomable reason declared cheerily 'oh look, how funny, a whole table of married couples, and in everyone one of them there has been an affair'

Whilst this statemet was sadly true, it was not necessarily known to all of the wives at the time. I can only imagine the atmosphere for the remainder of the night...

These are all much worse than mine but we are regularly invited to dinner parties by a couple who like to serve things as they are ready. It tends to go:

Bowl of peas on table followed 10 minutes later by a plate of stuffing balls, followed 10 minutes later by carrots etc. Time between peas and meat generally 40 minutes all the while being encouraged to eat up whilst its hot!!

We all sit around tucking into a little forlorn pile of peas and wondering if the gravy might come out at some point before desert. The food is yummy I just prefer to have it on the plate at the same time.

The worst one so far was mine. Made a lot of effort cooking everything from scratch, all my best stuff out. Garden made nice as was eating outside, perfect I think. Time for everyone to be arriving but no one showed up, not even an apologetic text. Kids were most disappointed as their friends were supposed to be coming with one of the families.

Dh and I went to a lovely dinner party where the hostess served the a gorgeous cake for pudding but kept licking her fingers whilst dishing up..so slice for guest 1 then scoop up crumbs to add to bowl, lick fingers..slice for guest 2.. get cake into bowl with help from licked fingers, another quick suck and so on. Mind you I might be a bit precious about people adding saliva to my food..it was lovely apart from that.

Kezia, desperation through sucking the sauce off the pasta the things we will do!

I really don't like dinner parties. I find it to be a very 'forced' situation and can't relax. The worst one I had was actually at my house and my dp had cooked. He's usually a very good cook, but it all went wrong and the food was nearly inedible. It was 5 years ago and still makes me cringe now.

I was the dinner party guest from hell once.

DD must have been about 3. I'd not long split up from ex-P and while I don't remember being particularly down, a good friend must have thought I needed to get out. She invited me along as a last minute extra to a dinner party at her house with three (childless smug) couples. I explained it was too short notice to get a sitter, but she was really lovely and said no problem, it would be great to have DD there, she's no bother, she can go to sleep upstairs and I could stay with her in spare room etc. Really lovely of her and I happily accepted.

She then said DD would be welcome to join us for dinner. She'd serve up early and then give me chance to settle her before dessert. All good, except friend didn't communicate this to her partner, who was cooking, so he ended up rushing the cooking and serving up the minute the other guests arrived following some urgent hissed whispers in the kitchen.

DD was pretty hungry and tired by this point and not being particularly charming. Friend had chosen to serve pasta because I said she'd eat that, but friend's DP mixed all the pasta in with a rich tomato sauce which DD flatly refused to eat. The more tired, hungry and whingy she got, the more fuss she was making about everything that was put in front of her, to be met with patronising pitying looks from the smug marrieds.

She flatly refused the pasta with tomato sauce on it, and in my desperation to get her to eat I ended up sucking the sauce off each bit and handing it to her. She then started saying it was too hot, (she would only eat cold things at that age) and I snapped at her, saying it was completely cold and to stop being silly. The host overheard and grabbed the plate saying "so sorry -I'll warm it up for her" and I had to chase him into the kitchen to rescue it.

I was so stressed at the hassle we were causing I couldn't relax and just wanted to leave but couldn't as I'd had a drink. I went up to put DD to bed and stayed up there about 2 hours and pretended I'd fallen asleep next to her!

I know at least one of those couples has two young kids now. I really hope they look back and change their judgy opinion of me!

DH and I were visiting family friends - mother and son- while abroad on holiday. We had a lovely day out, then invited back for dinner, which we bought together at a local shop. Nice wine, but I was driving so only had one glass.

Near the end of a nice dinner, we decided that we would stay over (invite was pressed on us and certainly not unwelcome from hosts' pov) so I could drink a bit more.

About ten minutes later - during which time I had downed about half a bottle had a bit too much to drive, mother says, "ooh, my programme is on now, I can share the sofa bed with you"! And proceeds to ignore us while watching The Bill. Son gives us something to wear in bed, DH has a bum-skimming shirt and I have something similar.

They both merrily say, don't mind us, get undressed and in the sofa bed if you want, we just want to watch this. They don't speak to us for the rest of the evening.

In the morning we decide to leave early, without waking them, but can't even get into the toilet as they have locked all doors out of the room we were sleeping in. We managed to climb through a small window and escape!

All very strange.

Three come to mind, two from the same bloke.

Number one: He invited about ten of us round for dinner in his posh new flat. We arrived with wine, which was whisked away and never seen again. So we were offered one half glass of cheap plonk with no refills "until we see if anyone else turns up".
The meal was ... a microwaved ready meal divided between all of us (think one tablespoonful on a paper plate) followed by a shared (bought) value chocolate brownie traybake. Yum.

Number two, same guy different party; all of the guests were male couples, including the host and his partner. After some (limited) food and drinks, they started swinging and suggested that we put our car keys in the bowl to choose a partner. ExH and I were the only straight couple there, he began to look very uncomfortable and all I could think of was "One of them's going to be a bit disappointed":)
At that point we made our excuses and left. I often wonder if they were winding us up or if SE16 did have a gay swinging scene.

Number three was a chap who'd been to uni with ExH, after we ran into him one day we invited him + partner to dinner, nice evening if a bit dull. The fun began when the invite was reciprocated.
Turned up, there were about ten other people who obviously knew each other and weren't interested in talking to us. Starter was fish and seafood, which I don't like, but could live with. Conversation was all about their trips round Australia - as we've never been we just sat and said nothing. And so it went on all evening.
Finally we got up to go, I popped to the toilet and disturbed the host mid wee.
We never heard from them again.

Don't do dinner parties now.

Mrs that's so funny but I'd have been grateful for such a fab pudding.

Stayup what a fanny she was. Well rid of her.

Hows this. I wasn't there but I heard about it from a friend who was. My ex step mother was a social climber. No other words for it and clearly my dad didn't help her up the greasy pole enough so he was out (phew lucky escape IMHO). She attended a dinner with her new lawyer partner and as the dessert was served announced "I've been thinking about it and I've slept with all your husbands except yours Verity". Cue instant strained silence which continued for the rest of teh meal and all coffee etc. was refused as couples left clearly ready for huge arguments and difficult explanations.

I can well believe she'd said it too she is a bitch extrodinaire and we were well rid of her. I'd ahve loved to be a fly on the wall at all those couples homes later on that evening

Feel very sorry for the hostess who I knew quite well and is a very pleasant friendly kind lady (Not sure how Verity's husband fell through the net though)

Calamity, some people are just not into cooking. I go to a dinner party for the company more than the food. I have one good friend who hates cooking so we will always get something simple when we go to theirs for dinner but it doesn't bother me. I always cook from scratch and my friend always apologises when we go to her but I don't think she has anything to apologise for. We get fed and wined and have lovely company, what more could you want?

I once hosted a 'dinner party' (am not really posh enough to say 'dinner party' and feel a bit of a numpty even writing it down).

I had loads of lovely wine and cooked a beef stew (one of the meals I do best) with dumplings, roast potatos, Yorkshire puddings and lovely veg.

:)

But forgot about the desert until the last few minutes so had to nip to Tesco Express on the corner to find one.

Guests were given an Easter egg each..!

Am I little miss judgey pants that the worst one I've been to was where everything was ready meal? There's a very posh shop in our town that sells posh ready meals and all three courses were from there. Now don't get me wrong the meal was lovely tasting but given the wife is a teacher and was on 6 week summer holidays (DON'T get me started on teachers working during the holidays, I KNOW but they've done better dinner parties on a working week Saturday) I just would have expected at least one home cooked course. Believe it or not the one where the guest got hammered and fell asleep on the sofa was better than that because at least the food was home cooked and before he passed out the guest was a real hoot

Vote for classics!

ThisIs, that is awful! Did she really think that was a normal amount of food to serve? Did she eat that much herself?

My story is almost a complete opposite to some of the stories on here!

About 5 years me and ex-p were invited t dinner by one of ex-p's senior colleagues and his new wife.
When we got their the wife said she hoped we didn't mind but she'd decided not to serve a starter but just canapes instead. We said that ws great. She then showed us to the living room where there were about 20 large plates of 'canapes' so that it looked a bit like a small wedding buffet! (There was just the 4 of us eating)Every 30 seconds she would pick up one of the plates and stick it under our noses so we had to take something.

She later took us through to the dining room where she presented us with the main course. It was a roast dinner but one that i have never seen the likes of before or since....It wouldn't have looked out of place as one of those man v food challenges! Each one was on a serving plate like the ones you use to put the turkey on at Christmas. On my platter there was:
enough pork to cover a normal size dinner plate
10 large roast potatoes
3 full size yorkshires
probably enough mash to fill 2 soup bowls
4 different types of veg ( about several large tablespoons full of each)
2 full size sausages (!)
All smothered in gravy

Ex-p had the same. We were both at being presented with this mountain of food. But we didn't want to be rude so we both started to plow our ways through it. I managed to eat about 1/2. P managed about 2/3 of his, but by then we were well and truly stuffed. I had to force myself to swallow the last few mouthfuls (ever seen that christmas dinner episode of the Vicar of Dibley? Yeah, like that )
When I (closely followed by P)finally admitted defeat and put down my knife and fork and said 'thankyou very much, that was delicious (which it was tbf) but i'm completely full now' The wife proceeded to burst into tears and run from the room. Her DH followed her whilst we sat downstairs wondering what was going on. Eventually the husband came back and said his wife was very upset as we had offended her by not eating the meal she had slaved all day over and obviously thought her cooking was terrible!
We apologised and repeated that the meal was delicious but we genuinely were just full. The husband then threw away the last of our food and said he'd tell his wife tat we had finished it off whilst they were upstairs. He said this was what he usually(!) had to do when they had guests . Eventually he persuaded her to come back down. After spending 1/2 hour raving about how delicious the food was to the sullen looking wife we decided to make our escape. At which point she said "you can't leave yet, you haven't had pudding!"
{faints}
Pudding was bout a third of an apple pie each, swimming in a bowl of custard. She sat eyeballing us the whole time so we had to force down every bite. By that point i had gone beyond stuffed and my mouth just swallowed the food on autopilot without me even tasting it. We then staggered to the front door as fast as possible before she could suggest cheese and crackers

DH and I were invited to dinner by fairly good friends - the day before, the wife rang and asked if there was anything we'd rather not eat. I am generally veggie, but can get by if I'm not asked, but she did ask, so I said that I could eat fish but not meat, and definitely nothing 'obviously dead' i.e. with bones or eyeballs. So we turn up the next night and the main course plopped in front of me was.... a dead pigeon, trussed, still with claws (no head, thank God) that had been shot by our host. One pigeon per guest! I am quite quick at sliding the odd unwelcome piece of steak onto a neighbour's plate without anyone noticing, but I couldnt even bring myself to touch the bird . I kept thinking to myself 'why on earth did she even ring up to ask?'......

Jins has reminded me of one related to my sister. She realised her marriage was over when her husband said he was going to make a special effort and cook her dinner.

He served stuffed tomato starter, steak main and creme brulee for pud.

My sister is vegetarian and allergic to eggs and tomatoes

Veggie couple who would always serve us what became known as 'vomity pie'.

Went one Friday, had said vomity pie, rest of meal and then prepared to leave. They came to the door to wave us off. DP started the car and began to reverse out of their drive. Ran over their cat.

I gasped at the OP, hooted at Sooty and cheered the army rejects.

But mostly I'm relieved no-one's mentioned any of my attempts

Oh it was just thoughtlessness and lack of cooking skills. He knew I'd swerve the starter due to the goats cheese and I usually just have salad or veg rather than the carbs so he thought I'd be ok with the main. I hadn't made my aversion to peppers and olives clear enough in the past

He's much better nowadays. Ive had some wonderful meals. It was just that one that combined virtually everything I really dislike into one 3 course meal. He was mortified when he realised but there's not much you can do when you're sitting at the table. My 'not for me thanks' said all that was necessary

Jins, what an awful thing for your dh to do! My friend is coeliac and when we eat at hers, I expect a gluten-free meal, it wouldn't be fair on her or her dh to expect anything else. And you can cook lovely gluten-free meals

Am PMSL at "It's the wrong Chihuahua!" I know that's not your actual name but it makes it sound funnier!

One my DH insisted on cooking for. He managed to pick ingredients for each course that I cannot choke down even to be polite. They were spectacularly poor choices for a coeliac (me) as well including bread integrated into the starter and couscous with the main. I never have dessert as I'm not fond of the inevitable fruit/cream combinations so I went hungry that night.

I may possibly never forgive him

The guests enjoyed the meal though so that's all that matters. I had to sneak into the kitchen for chocolate

I never actually got to this one...

Friend texted me to ask if me, DH and DC wanted to come over for dinner. Except that she didn't, she accidentally texted a colleague of hers with the same first name, not someone she knew well enough to have over for a meal.

However, the colleague texted back that she would love to come. Friend replied asking who she would be bringing, colleague texted it would just be her and John. Now, John is not the name of my DH, but friend assumed it was just a weird predictive text thing and planned dinner, inviting two other couples we knew.

On the day, they are having drinks in the garden when colleague and husband turn up, of course she has no idea why they are here, and makes awkward conversation until her DH twigs and starts mouthing behind their backs "It's the wrong Chihuahua!"

Now, I think I would have had to have come clean and had a laugh about it, but they didn't want to admit there had been a mistake, so the couples that knew each other and these poor not-really-invited people had a meal in what must have been a bit of an odd atmosphere, especially at first.

Friends are convinced that the colleage and her DH wouldn't have noticed anything amiss, but if I'd turned up for dinner and been met with blank, uncomprehending looks, I would have thought something was a bit off...