Come Dine With Me - Series 4 Dinner party hosting high society style

Dining without the rules

Date Published:

02/04/2008

Dressing for dinner and conversational taboos may seem part of a bygone dining age but rules and regulations were once an integral part of dinner party etiquette. Self-confessed sloppy host Hannah Williams breaks out the best cutlery and tries hosting a dinner high society style

I love a good dinner party. Nothing beats donning an apron, cooking up a feast and feeding hungry and grateful mouths with the fruits of my labour. Living in a shared house there's plenty of opportunities to satisfy my feeder fetish, but while our shared dining may be frequent it is rarely fine. Dinners often take a 'more the merrier' approach rather than a refined and considered display of dining etiquette, and why not? Surely, I don't need a prescribed list of social rules to chat and eat with a group of friends.

Charlie Cottrell, my rival in this cook-off, believes dinners should have a sense of occasion and perhaps she's right but can a list of rules and regulations really enhance my dining experience? Armed with Diana Mather's definitive dining guide I decided to put the rules to the test and discover whether such pomp and ceremony has any place in modern dining.

The invites

Correct etiquette demands I invite my guests six weeks in advance but there was no such luxury for my five favoured companions who were given just days to prepare for my dining bonanza. All were prepped to arrive for pre-dinner drinks at 7.30pm, in finest garb with a token of appreciation for the hardworking host. Wine as a gift was forbidden in line with 'the rules' and so I was treated to an array of goodies including a sudoku calendar and a box of tea bags. While the range was somewhat random it was nice to be given an actual gift rather than something to supplement the dinner.

The table

As I was hosting the event on a weekday I'd managed to prepare most of the food in advance. I commandeered the help of a house mate and a boyfriend to lay the table and prep a Bloody Mary, leaving me just enough time to set my hair in place before the first guest's arrival - 20 minutes ahead of schedule!

The guests

I invited friends who didn't know each other that well to put my powers of conversational hosting to the test. But I'd done my research and discovered a brace of facts about each diner to share with the other guests as a conversational springboard. 'Meet Laura, she's played the Virgin Mary three times in school plays and here's Ian, he can't grow a beard,' that sort of thing.

While the facts were somewhat flippant they worked well and got everyone chatting, allowing me to focus some much needed attention on cheese crouton construction.

The music

Background music is frowned upon in polite dining circles so I adopted a strict 'no tunes' policy. But rather than creating the stilted atmosphere I'd predicted, the lack of background noise provided a handy conversational gambit. As in; why is there no music? Isn't it weird without any music? Can I put some music on?

But the rules prevailed and once everybody adjusted to the fact that correct dining etiquette didn't mean adopting the vocabulary of the eighteenth century, conversation flowed and the lack of soundtrack was forgotten. We discussed everything from how parents met, to onion soup and cycling helmets.

The conversation

The topics of sex, money and religion were banned, which I hadn't expected to pose a problem owing to my friends not being sleazy, capitalist, religious zealots but it's amazing how often the designated taboos cropped up. Whether it was my friend's desire to find a better paid job or speculation over the sexual preference of TV presenters I regularly found myself having to haul the conversation back on to more acceptable ground.

After a while, this became a bit farcical and I gave up. Sex and money are such an ingrained part of our culture it would be difficult and unnecessary to purposefully avoid them. It's good to cool too much heated debate, especially among people who don't know each other that well, but on the whole I think people can be trusted to choose their own topics. And as my guests weren't all from the same friendship group, we had a refreshing break from the gossip and tittle tattle that often monopolises dinner table conversation.

I cooked five courses including cheese and coffee and by the end of the night we'd stretched our feasting out for three and half hours. It turned out my normally casual friends had relished the idea to dress up for dinner and there were lots of well-intentioned 'let's make the effort again' chat.

So will I make all that effort again? Definitely. I don't think I have the time (or the stomach capacity) to cook such a feast on a regular basis but it was great to see different friends together, eating, chatting and taking the time to get to know each other.

The conversation topics could be more relaxed and perhaps a little music before dinner wouldn't completely corrupt us but on the whole I felt the hard work and discipline was well worth it - with a suduko calendar to boot.