New York's hottest new table is in your living room
The year of bringing special dining experiences into New York City apartment buildings
This Substack newsletter was birthed by me, at a downtown hospital…out of pure exhaustion for new restaurant openings and repetitive menus I was lining up at 5pm to try.
It was a natural birth, one that took place at my chipping dining room table instead of in a bathtub with a midwife. This birthing bit is funny because if you know me, you know that giving birth and having children is still not something I’ve coined as a current calling.
In fact, the only true instinct I've grown in the last year of my later-twenties life is hosting and the concept of being ok with people wearing shoes in your apartment after you’ve had one glass of wine. Or standing and eating spoonfuls of cold pasta after it’s been passed around a few times.
(To set the record though- I do not claim the trad-wife trend of hosting. I'm actually a pretty bad cook, it takes me until five in the evening the following Sunday after a party to start the dishes, and I pretty much always use fake flowers.)
And yes, I know I’ve beaten a dead horse recently by talking about my supper club in my most recent articles, but the focus of this one is to get you comfortable with being the host when an external location can’t offer you the experience you have in mind.
For the times when it just makes way more sense to create the experience yourself instead of fighting for a reservation for a large (or small!) group that just won’t be able to embody the occasion you want to celebrate. When you want your friends to be able to lay on your couch with a glass of wine and piece of cake at midnight when the restaurant would have kicked you out.
Hosting can also be about creating an experience with your existing community. It isn’t a burden you have to fully take on yourself. As I mentioned, I personally (rarely) cook, but hosting has allowed me to tap into my love for tablescaping and fun themes, while sharing the responsibilities with my friends who have the talent for cooking or baking, for example, and want to collaborate on an unforgettable evening.
So with that, cheers to a year of experiences at homes of all shapes and sizes, doing everything that a restaurant, in many cases, can’t always do.
How to get confident hosting this year
1. You don’t have to have a ton of food
Feeding people is usually the thing that makes hosting seem like an impossible task. A set menu is way too expensive, family style is hard to gauge portion-wise, and guests have preferences and allergies. Lately, I’ve been spoiled as I’ve gotten to work with extremely talented private chefs like platedbykelly and my friend Colin (who is socialmedialess), but many many times have I fully relied on ordering reasonably priced catering/takeout or doing a potluck style, and neither took away from the evening.
People also just…don’t eat a much as you think. Even with the catering that I’ve ordered in the past, I always have tons of leftovers and people rarely have room for dessert (even though I personally can’t get behind that and always have room), so even if the recommended portion feeds 10, rarely 10 actual portions are taken. Make sense?
You don’t ever need more than one entree and one side dish, but I’d argue that having the ever so popular “grazing table” concept with accoutrements like olives, fruit, and chips for people to snack on as they’re sipping a cocktail or glass of wine usually fills everyone up. And when it’s time for the actual hot food, only a few bites are taken.
This is also not me telling you to accidentally starve your friends, this IS me telling you from experience that I’ve never not had (tons) of leftovers from a dinner party, and to simply not overcomplicate the menu.
Easy concepts I love: (have talked about some of these before)
Wegmans Sushi Platter- $120 for 75 pieces of Sushi
A dozen 7th Street burgers + fries- less than $100 and loved by everyone
Ordering a square pie pizza and cutting it up into mini squares- bonus points if you get it from Emmetts on Grove
Olives, fruit, kettle cooked chips + onion dip, popcorn, prosciutto + chips - all can be bought at Trader Joes and plated in an elevated format
Fresh baguette + whipped butter- around $20 and so easy to make with an electric whisk
XL spicy rigatoni + caesar salad catering from Ferdi if you need mains- you can feed 12 people for under $200
2. It’s all about presentation
As a continuation of the above list, you can make anything and everything look and feel elevated with presentation. All you need are a few silver trays in your arsenal which are usually in abundance for amazing prices at Mother of Junk if you’re willing to polish some of it yourself, and of course all over Etsy and Ebay. My favorite Amazon staples for plating are also these silver coupes that are perfect for olives, snacks, mousse, puddings, etc and these tiered silver trays that work for pizza, burgers, fries, and anything you want to elevate. Height also makes alllll the difference with plating, which is why I love tiers and footed trays.
If you’re willing to invest a tiny bit more in silver, silver shell dishes are also all over Etsy and make any salad or main dish to be passed around like a pasta or a meat look incredible.
3. Bring back the $30 beer pong table
Whenever I help consult for a custom birthday party that I’m helping design, a big fair concern is the simple lack of a long table, and I’m here to tell you that all you need is an 8ft plastic foldable table to make your wildest tablescape dreams come to life.
It folds up small enough to slide under a bed or be tucked into a closet, and with a good tablecloth, not a soul will ever know that you’re using a literal…beer pong table. An 8ft table can fit 5 people on each side and two people on the ends, and if living room space in your New York City apartment is a (again, very fair) concern, the 6ft option still fits around 8 people. I also don’t think people need formal seats- the seats you do have + a desk chair usually works, but a set of 4 black foldable chairs is decently cheap and can also usually fit under a bed or in a closet.
4. It’s ok to ask people to chip in!
Depending on the format of your party, you generally should not be taking on the burden of the full hosting cost. If it’s your birthday, have your guests chip in! If you or your friend is offering to cook, asking for a little help to cover ingredients is totally ok. If it feels weird to ask for actual monetary compensation, BYOB is extremely fair (whichI think everyone would agree on), or a potluck where you guests contribute something is also super low lift. This is actually a topic that I’d love comments on, because I feel like some people think asking people to chip in is a strange concept, but I think it encourages regular hosting in a healthy way.
People also forget what cleaning up after hosting is like if they don’t host often, so asking for a little help on costs to have enough food and drink for everyone to munch on seems entirely appropriate to me. Another reminder that if you’re hosting instead of going out to a group dinner, your guests would usually be spending over $100 on dinner and drinks anyway.
4. Unlimited booze is actually sort of cheap
I remember talking to an owner of a bar recently and we were talking about restaurant margins. Obviously I don’t own a restaurant, but hosting events has opened my eyes to how restaurants monetize on the cost of supplies for the food and drink they provide, and the only way money is really made is…alcohol.
I’m saying this because you can make a large format cocktail (in my recommended martini dispenser, of course) for 20 guests for the price of like 3 cocktails at a bar. It’s one thing if you’re into top shelf alcohol, but for most of us, you can get a decent handle of 1.75ml of Gin to make a martini for about $70 and a few bottles of orange wine and you have enough drinks for your guests for the majority of the evening, especially if you are also telling folks to BYOB. With cool cocktail dispensers these days, I’m not sure (why anyone, frankly) would hire a bartender for a party unless it was a wedding or over 50 people.
5. All you need is a tablecloth
The single most important thing to the look of a dinner party when hosting is the tablecloth. You can bring any table- wood, plastic, glass, etc to life with a simple tablecloth. I have a few of my favorites linked here, but also love using a big piece of fabric, or getting a simple white/cream/light pink embroidered high quality option secondhand that you can use for pretty much any occasion. I feel like the topic of decor and tablescaping, alone, probably needs a series of articles, but if I could pick one thing to transform an experience, it would be a tablecloth...
…and if anyone cared, next place would be a few taper candles (please skip the flowers, they’re so expensive).
Love it Madeline!!
Feeling inspired to host !!