The Dinner Party
My two favorite words are "private" and "dinner"
I love to be invited anywhere, but especially to someone’s house. Even if it’s a secondhand invitation, saying YES to be a guest of someone unfamiliar has led to so many good things in my life. These days I want to hide from all Instagram flyers. Knowing too much takes the fun out of certain events. I feel more at ease entering a room when I won’t know who’s all there.
Some background. Ten years ago when I was still living in Virginia, I started a blog called People in Their Homes with two friends from college, Tavish Timothy and Emi Moore (who since then started Casa Shop). It was our little Richmond-based version of Freunde Von Freunden. We captured private moments of friends in their homes, like Lucia Zolea and Lauren Schofield, who is currently taking over New York by the sweetest storm, in the form of her cakes (such as this one for The New Yorker’s 100th birthday; they also just published a series of notable people in their homes). Another of those featured in PITH was the florist Kelsey Sykes, who introduced me to Adrien de Mones, one of my dearest friends today, at a dinner party at her house in Harlem. Through writing, I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited into some of the most beautiful spaces, covering some of the most intimate gatherings with everyone and their moms.
Like when I spent a few weeks in the South of France with Adrien, Grace, and Adrien’s mother, the photographer Martine Fougeron, eating bouillabaisse for many sunsets. It’s easy to romanticize how much I enjoyed those evenings, forgetting the part where I sat mostly in silence, nodding or giggling or talking to Grace because neither of us spoke French. Still, I felt very welcome, and I even made new friends, like the artist Pierre Schwartz! To celebrate their recent engagement, I took Grace and Adrien to dinner at Elio’s, which felt like a party in itself (an establishment recommended to me by Fiona Duncan, who had me at “trophy wives, fancy watches, Joan Didion, and good food”). We ordered the beef carpaccio, tossed salad, osso bucco, and ragu. The first time I went, I almost broke up with my boyfriend over the most perfect plate of spaghetti pomodoro. During the winter, the soon-to-be-newlyweds hosted a small gathering at their home in the Bronx, where Grace had an impressive pot of chili going for several hours. I ran into Adrien’s childhood friends, Paul (son of fashion designer Lemaire) and his girlfriend Elise, who crashed my 30th birthday at Fanelli Cafe one spring. They spoke about what life was like growing up in the West Village, a few of the guests were pregnant, and the whole thing felt like a family affair. It’s this exact feeling that I crave the most, and it’s so satisfying when you find it, even for an evening.
The best dinners are random and unscripted (disclaimer: I’ve never been to a branded dinner, would it change my mind?). Classic mixers where you arrive unattended and leave having met one or three, or ten, new people. I find it’s not always the best idea to bring a +1 to semi-work related dinners, (if you are even allowed one) because I’ll spend the whole evening too focused on my guest instead of the host’s. What I’ve learned throughout my career as a Professional Guest is that you can tell a lot about someone by their style of hosting. Being a good host is like being a friendship broker. You could change someone’s life by deciding who they should next to (a lot of people in film who are notable collaborators have met this way). It’s a delicate balancing act between structure and spontaneity. Knowing how to say just enough and when, knowing how to enter and exit. Knowing how to make everyone feel embraced. Knowing how to follow up. I’m always impressed by those who take the time to write thank you emails, let alone physical cards. My friend Kat hand-mailed a custom-sealed letterhead after a casual birthday outing once and nothing has topped that gesture since.
A few favorite dinners I attended recently.
WEST VILLAGE — Alyssa Davis is someone who truly knows how to host a good party. Anyone who went to her gala would know this. The first time I’d been to her space was in 2018 for Benjamin Kellogg’s show, The Window of the Breath Which Lets in the Divine. The setting for this evening was much different of course, though still familiar in a few ways. She pays generous attention to details. Someone told me she initially pursued engineering in school, which would make sense. Most people will tell you they hate gallery dinners. I love them. For one, they’re almost always intergenerational, therefore conversations tend to steer toward a wider range of subjects. More anthropological. My line opener of the night was asking every man who looked over the age of 45 whether they were married or not.
“The golem is a solemn piece,” Alyssa texted early on in the week, describing Genevieve Goffman’s show at Foreign and Domestic (which, if you haven’t seen it yet, runs through Sunday). The celebrations were anything but. I did notice that most of the guests were wearing all-black, a memo I somehow missed. I had just come from the Independent Fair, wearing a bright green Junko Shimada skirt and a white Theory top. I love art fairs mostly for the people watching, and the fashion this year was just as superior as Rachel Tashijan called it out to be. “There was just an air. Very coded. Many signifiers. Well-tailored and thoughtful materials. It was all boom, boom boom,” Vogue reporter Sam Falb, who had gone to TEFAF, seemed to agree.
I snacked on an elaborate tray of crudite while talking to artists Joey Frank, Paris Hynes, Martina Cox, and others, accompanied by a very rich dip and wine courtesy of Honey's. We made a toast to Genevieve and Alyssa. The main course of the night was a homemade Sicilian dish. Pasta alla Norma. I am still thinking about that pasta. I laughed when I saw another writer faceplanted in a cascading plateful of it, and wished it was me, but I had been too distracted by the two art collectors who I was sandwiched between. Following the dinner was the afterparty… I heard nearly 200 people came?
CHINATOWN — When Francisco Cordero invited me to Lubov for a casual closing party for Eunnam Hong, I didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not a sprawling picnic table full of people eating raw marinated crabs (a Korean delicacy) from Rice Thief. I didn’t know anyone. I just sat down and started eating, like a vulture, with my crustacean carcass. Eunnam and her friends were sitting across from me. I opened a beer and said something to Eunnam in Korean, who began divulging about her art, and motherhood. I met the artist Kim Westfall, who announced that she worked on a pop-up cafe project at the DMZ. The whole thing felt very casual, very pub-on-the-street corner vibes. I haven’t felt like that in New York in a long time. Since then, I’ve seen Eunnam’s work in Harper’s, and on the cover of books. Francisco is another gallerist with a great eye and a heart of gold. Good things always tend to happen to the artists he discovers.
CHELSEA — I briefly mentioned Amalia Ulman’s water tasting event at Cucina Alba in this interview for Family Style some time ago. I first met Amalia Ulman when Fiona invited me to join Ulman’s private book club, “Very Welcome”. It was a small group with a regular cast of other writers, like Natasha Stagg, Dean Kissick, Gideon Jacobs, Travis Diehl, and Cristine Brache. Amalia is a Very Warm host in any setting. When I was still single and in-and-out of New York after my neighbor was murdered during the anti-Asian hate crime era, I stayed at her apartment with her cats Gemi and Holga for a few nights. Last summer, Nick and Amalia held a very colorful apartment exhibition with friends called MiCasa in the Upper West Side.
Cucina Alba is also very colorful, dressed in large, summery murals by Alex Katz with a nautical feel to it. For the tasting, the bulk of the menu was kept simple. Bread, fish, water, and wine. Everything was so fresh, it was almost as if we were eating on a boat. Adam Leonti, the chef and owner (who just opened another Alba in Los Angeles), spent the evening presenting four, five, maybe six courses. Each dish was thoughtfully paired with a glass of one of Amalia’s novel water brands that she curated. Volcanic tomatoes grown in the lush soils of Mt. Vesuvius in Naples, paired with Lithuanian bottles of fizzy saline. Bernegat scallops, hand-harvested, with a splash of OJ and lemon, paired with Borjomi (Stalin’s favorite water, a fact that I love?). Palate cleansers like sliced blood oranges with a drizzle of Ligurian extra virgin olive oil. Our main course was pressurized steam branzino (flash-boiled for only 90 seconds, making the meat extra buttery and flaky) with truffles, paired with a water from Austria. Vichy, Vincentika, and the likes. I felt so high by the end of the night.
i feel like this would be good if i cared about the ppl involved