Food/drink themed evenings - new ideas needed

[RockingMyFiftiesNot]

We're a household of 4 adults. Throughout lockdown/ Tier 3 etc we have had a themed evening every so often given that we can't go our to eat or have people round to dinner. As we live in an area that has had tight restrictions for so long, I'm out of new ideas, and now that Christmas is behind us I think we're ready die another special food night.

We've done Italian, tapas, Greek, Mexican; wine and gin tastings; a formal dinner; cocktail making. Did BBQs to death in the warm weather.

Indian/Chinese/Thai are our regular takeaways, occasionally fish & chips so wouldn't do anything like that and we have a roast dinner every week anyway.

We've done special brunches for birthdays; I enjoy an afternoon tea but the others aren't so keen, luckily had one in a very tiny window when we were allowed to meet outside.

We all eat/drink most things. New ideas would be appreciated - ideally where we can theme food and drinks but that's not essential. Thank you

Indoor picnic?
Lifestyle eg veggie?
Luxurious eg prime rib and expensive wine
More specific - Vietnamese, French, Lithuanian etc. Could add more learning in that way.
Or specific to food - only foods starting with an O. Or 10 different egg-based dishes. Or 3 courses with the same ingredient.
Challenge each other. One person sets one or more ingredients the others have to incorporate.
Could you experiment with styles of cooking/ preparing so a Cordon Bleu evening, a 'cooked with fire' evening, a 'foraged/yellow sticker' evening.

Some great ideas there @Affor, thank you.

Burns night is coming up. A burns supper?

Sushi making
Burns night is coming up
As is Chinese New Year
Speakeasy (so prohibition cocktails and something like chicken and waffles)
Ready, Steady, Cook challenge

Dim sum and tea
Sushi and sake

Classic British: toad in the hole, greens and gravy followed by steamed pudding with custard.
Completely seasonal: design a dinner of local (or at least uk grown or reared) produce.
'Michelin star': look up the example menu for somewhere super fancy as d make your own versions of the dishes from the written description alone.
Fruits of the sea feast.
Burns supper (25 Jan so not long to plan)

Come dine with me - take turns every night for a week and score each evening. Eat in the dark experience. Themed on a favourite film e.g lord of the rings hobbit multi meal special - do they know about second breakfast..... , Harry Potter with cocktail potions and feast. 70s or 80s theme. Random ingredients challenge. Charity swop - a simple cheap meal and give what you may have spent to a charity/ food bank. Murder mystery game set often comes with meal plan. Everything has to be one colour e.g green for the food , outfits etc

We do theme days with my family.

How about historical ones? We did a WWII one that was good!

Currently doing weekly curry nights, fish nights and homemade "takeaway" on Saturday

Oh I saw a restaurant lately called Bao and Buns. So dim sum followed by patisserie.

Moroccan is always a good one. Spicy tagine, lemons, flatbreads

You are a brilliant lot thank you, so many things I hadn't thought of.

Inspired by another thread on here (that I now can’t find😡), we are doing a round the world themed food day for the next two weeks. We are starting in France tomorrow, followed by Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Malaysia then Indonesia

We also did an alphabet night - everything had to begin with a certain letter - so A meant apple vodka, aperol, Angel cake, asparagus quiche etc. You could eqch do your initial

Burns supper

Macmillan are doing murder mystery kits online in return for a donation.

Decade-based dinner eg classic 1970s dinner party, classic 1920s, etc.

Ready Steady cook - one team choose the ingredients for the other to come up with the dishes and vice versa

Other cuisines:
Vietnamese
Sri Lankan

Another great idea! I guess for country based themes I could just look at a world map for inspiration, but loving some of the other non-country based ideas.
Was also thinking of doing a retro theme - prawn cocktail, Black Forest gateau, coronation chicken, vol au vents etc

We had fondue the other night ( We have a fondue set but you could make it on the hob(which you have to do anyway) and then keep the pan hot over several tea lights) we had a vat of melted cheese with bread, gammon, sausage, cauliflower, brocolli to dunk into it.

Moroccan
Korean
Brazilian
French
German
Scandi

A murder mystery night is a great idea - base the food around the setting of the game.

You could have a vegan night. Each write four or five foods on slips of paper then take it in turns to draw one out of a hat and you have to come up with a dish containing those ingredients. Might be a good idea to do the draw for pudding separately

The vegan night suggestion is completely separate from the ingredients draw - poor punctuation on my part!

I recommend this

dishpatch.co.uk/

A Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian dinner? Or a medieval/Tudor one?

Choose a foreign film to watch and dinner has to be food from that country.

Or a Roman feast come to that - served on cushions on the floor?

Decades - so food from the 50s, 60s etc.

Taking one base ingredient that you all like and everyone coming up with a dish with it - like a Masterchef mystery box challenge.

Just before Christmas we had a brilliant party with M & S party food (I'd popped in for milk and clocked there was 3 for 2 on all the nibbles). We had a 'casino' (played pontoon with DS), a dance (spotify) and fancy drinks (DS milk in a martini glass, me martini in a martini glass). Dressing fancy essential. It was a lot of fun.

A port and cheese evening 🥴
A selection of cheeses, fresh hot crusty bread, olives, salad veg and chutneys. A selection of ports to sample lifts pinky in the air

We had Middle Eastern week last week and cooked several recipes from Ottolenghi and Sabrina Ghayour.