In my second year of college, I became addicted to hosting dinner parties.
During my first co-op in New York, I invited the only three people I knew in the city over to my apartment and cooked dinner for them. Since then, many of my fondest memories from college have been made over various dinner parties at my apartment, parks and on the living room floors.
There’s something very special about a dinner party. It can seem daunting at first, but you have the power to transform it into whatever you want it to be. It can be fancy, casual, outlandish, somber. You can invite three people or 20 (but who has the apartment space for that?). And above all, the dinner party is a vessel for a good conversation. Small gatherings foster a strong community. With students at Northeastern rotating in and out of co-op cycles, it can be difficult to find time to maintain face-to-face friendships. Dinner parties are the perfect way to debrief and catch up with old friends or to form new friendships.
When you host a dinner party, you are the director. You create the environment. As a self-proclaimed dinner party connoisseur, here’s how you can make the most out of your dinner party planning:
Find something to celebrate
For every dinner party, you need to name the occasion. It can be big, small, random — just find something to celebrate. If your friend got their first co-op offer, celebrate it! If you finally finished that essay you were procrastinating on, celebrate it! If you hit 500 connections on LinkedIn, celebrate it! If you finished all of your midterm exams and bombed every single one of them, celebrate the fact that at least you made it through.
Earlier this year, some of my best friends spent two weeks of sleepless nights working on a project for a club. By the last day, they were running purely on adrenaline and coffee. I invited them and a few other friends over to my apartment to eat dinner and celebrate their accomplishment. I baked a matcha strawberry cake and wrote “yay! it’s over!” in buttercream on top of it. College is tough. Find every excuse to celebrate anything and everything.
Create a soundtrack
Half the fun of a dinner party is the before: picking a menu, buying ingredients and dancing around your kitchen while you wait for the pot to boil. It is of the utmost importance that you curate the perfect playlist to accompany you while embarking on this journey. This is what I like to call “the movie montage phase” of the preparatory process.
The music you choose should be entirely dependent on the type of food you’re making. For example, I exclusively listen to the “Waitress” Original Broadway Cast Recording every time I bake something. But, I would never dare to listen to showtunes while I cook. It just doesn’t fit the atmosphere.
For a cozy night in, go with the classics: Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell or The Beatles. If you’re cooking with friends, do some karaoke: Taylor Swift, One Direction or Lady Gaga. Pick something upbeat and lighthearted to set the tone for a fun night.
Pick a theme
If you’re planning on hosting a potluck, pick a theme for the food. Maybe everyone brings their favorite comfort food or a food that starts with the first letter of their first name. You could request that everyone make food from a specific cuisine. Picking a theme will help provide structure to your party and give your guests some guardrails. Otherwise, you might end up with a dinner combo of grilled cheese and sushi.
Even if you’re making all the food for your dinner party, you could try to pick an ingredient to center all of your dishes around. At the last dinner party I hosted, I went with a Korean-Italian fusion theme: I made gochujang honey glazed chicken thighs, kimchi focaccia, tteokbokki alla vodka and a spicy sesame slaw. In the future, I want to try more fusion themes and play around with different flavor combinations. Get creative! Search for inspiration on social media, at restaurants or try my favorite method: Grab every ingredient that looks good to you at the grocery store and find a way to make it work.
Set the table
The saying is true — “you eat with your eyes first.” I value the look of my dining table almost as much as I value the taste of my food. It’s an art. Go to Trader Joe’s and buy some flowers to make a table centerpiece. Buy a few candles from the clearance section of T.J. Maxx. Fold up some paper and in your best cursive handwriting, write out your guests’ names for place cards.
In September 2024, my friend and I co-hosted a dinner party at her house. Our theme was “The End of Summer,” and we wanted the decorations to be bright and sunny for summer and the food to be warm and cozy for fall. We made a white wine chicken pasta dish, rosemary focaccia, crostini with goat cheese and fig jam, apple cider and a mixed berry pie. She lit the candles, set the place cards and opened the windows to let the warm summer air in. We listened to “Kansas Anymore” by Role Model while we cooked. The dinner was a reunion for our Dialogue of Civilizations, and it was the perfect environment for a long overdue life catch-up with friends and a wonderful start to the semester.
Make a fun dessert
I am a huge proponent of mandatory dessert. Having something sweet after dinner is the law, as far as I’m concerned. Dessert is also your moment for a grand finale. Bake something fun that goes along with your theme! Recently, I’ve loved baking cakes, not only because I think they’re the most dramatic form of dessert, but I also have the opportunity to write something fun on the top. If not a cake, I will usually bake some sort of cookie or bar because they’re the most transportable dessert. If you have leftovers, you can send your friends home with Ziploc bags full of cookies like little party favors.
Something I learned from my mom: Always make a giant batch of cookie dough and scoop and freeze half of it. That way, if you are ever in dire need of a cookie, you always have some on hand (I have actually had many cookie emergencies in my lifetime. You would be surprised.)
Go into a food coma
At the end of your dinner party, you should be ready to take a huge nap. My greatest wish for every dinner party is for the conversation to be so enthralling that I lose track of time, for the food to be so delicious that I eat too much of it and that I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. By the end of the night, I hope we are already setting a date for next time, and I hope that all of my guests leave happy and full and smiling. This is what college is about.
