Revel

Why Dinner Parties Endure

A great dinner party is part ritual, part art. The menu, the lighting, the way conversation flows—they all come together to create something both fleeting and unforgettable. But beyond its aesthetics, at its core a dinner party is about connection: It’s a chance to gather, pause, and share a moment that elevates the everyday.

Twentieth-century anthropologist Victor Turner studied rituals and found they often move through three phases: separation, liminality, and reintegration. The dinner party, at its best, thrives in the liminal space—it’s a moment when people step outside their usual roles, shedding hierarchies to meet as equals over a shared table. This act fosters what Turner calls communitas—a deep sense of togetherness that transcends the ordinary. It’s why a well-hosted dinner party can feel almost sacred. The right setting, the tailored mix of people—suddenly the night takes on a rhythm of its own.

❦

Gathering around food to build connections is an ancient practice. At a burial site in Israel dating back 12,000 years, archaeologists found remains of a ritual feast, offering a glimpse into how sharing a meal has long been about more than just survival. It’s a way to mark transitions, affirm identity, and build bonds.

Different cultures have shaped the dinner party in their own ways. In ancient Greece, symposiums blended food, wine, and philosophy, resulting in events where the art of conversation was as essential as the meal itself. In imperial China, elaborate banquets were a cornerstone of political and social life. During the Song dynasty, Emperor Renzong was so fascinated by the way common people gathered that he would disguise himself as a servant and slip into taverns to observe. He understood that food wasn’t just nourishment—it was power, culture, and the pulse of society.

During Europe’s medieval age, lavish feasts in castle halls were carefully orchestrated displays of affluence and influence. Still, The Decameron, written in the fourteenth century, opines that “Feasts, after all, are the ornaments of life, and gatherings provide that delightful company without which, perhaps, nothing could be done.” Sharing food in a room surrounded by others is simply necessary.

During the Italian Renaissance, dining reflected not just wealth but refinement. Etiquette manuals emerged, the first one being Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), published by Baldassare Castiglione in 1528, which taught the art of decorum and civilized conversation.

Victorian dinner parties were exercises in social maneuvering, with carefully set tables and a sophisticated language of manners. But the twentieth century changed everything—Prohibition-era cocktail parties made hosting playful and subversive, as formality gave way to spontaneity.

In Armenia and Georgia, the tamada, or toastmaster, is a central figure in any feast, guiding the rhythm of the evening with spontaneous toasts throughout the course of the meal. These aren’t quick cheers, but thoughtful tributes to family, love, and friendship. Attendees listen intently, responding with affirmations, and it’s considered respectful to finish each pour after a toast. Every celebration should have a tamada!

India’s long history of communal dining includes satrams, temple guest houses that offered meals not just for sustenance but for spiritual and social harmony. The Mughal emperors turned dining into an opulent affair where etiquette and generosity were as important as the sumptuous meals—blending Persian, Central Asian, and Indian influences—laid out in spreads on beautifully arranged dastarkhāns.

Among the Yoruba, gatherings have long been marked with elaborate meals that symbolize rites of passage—births, deaths, and everything in between. The palaver, a tradition of settling disputes over food, reinforces the idea that the dinner table is not just for leisure but for diplomacy and kinship.

What we know of Ethiopia’s ancient feasting traditions is mostly pieced together through archaeology and historical texts. By the twelfth century, King Lalibela’s banquets featured bread dipped in herb bouillon—possibly an early version of injera and wot—alongside honey wine called t’ej. The serata gebr, a medieval record of royal gatherings, paints a vivid picture of abundant feasts with injera, rich stews, and prized cuts of beef, all served with careful ritual and hierarchy. These traditions, rooted in the ancient Aksumite era, still shape Ethiopian dining culture.

Latin American cultures have preserved the essence of the table through many centuries of traditions: The Aztecs hosted grand feasts to honor gods and rulers. The Argentine asado, more than just a barbecue, is a ritual of fire and an homage to the practice of animal husbandry and the craft of charcuterie—where time slows, fire crackles, and conversation deepens over perfectly grilled meat and bottles of wine.

Some dinner parties have gone beyond the realm of home gatherings, becoming legendary soirees in their own right. Princess Margaret’s infamous dinners on the Caribbean island of Mustique were part theater, part spectacle, with royalty and stars mixing freely and indulging in long nights of laughter and scandal. Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel—despite the fact that the concept was lifted from a Hollywood party at Ellen and Dominick Dunne’s home, where Capote was once a guest—remains one of the most talkedabout parties in history. An exercise in exclusivity and drama, it was about creating a world, if only for a few hours. The 1972 Rothschild Surrealist Ball at Château de Ferrières was a feast of extravagance and illusion, where invitees like Salvador Dalí and Audrey Hepburn arrived in fancy masks and otherworldly attire. Candlelit halls, theatrical décor, and a menu designed to blur the line between food and art turned the night into a living dream, where the rules of reality didn’t apply.

The French president François Mitterrand, in turn, hosted dinners that were as much about diplomacy as indulgence. His dinners were where politics met pleasure, a space to forge alliances over fine wine and decadent courses. Known for his over-the-top tastes, in his last days he famously held a secret farewell dinner featuring the highly controversial dish ortolan, a tiny songbird eaten whole.

The dinner party has existed in, and evolved into, many different forms, but through time core details have endured: the ritual, the mix of people, the generosity, the way a meal unfolds into something larger than itself. Today, the dinner party can be both as distinctive and as personal as ever, as you’ll see in the menus that follow. It can be a lavish, candlelit affair or a casual, last-minute gathering. It can be steeped in tradition or entirely improvised. What hasn’t changed is its essence: It’s where barriers dissolve, time slows, and something as common as a meal becomes unforgettable.