An Alternative Dining Format
When you host a dinner, what is your real aim? Is it not to provide some zest, some spice to you and your guests’ lives?
You realize that the meal alone no matter how sensational may not satisfy that goal. Instead you hope for a catalyst to spark the real desire for your evening, that is great conversation.
The purpose of this website is to elaborate on a format that can be that catalyst. Follow the ideas presented here. Better prepare to host a dinner discussion remembered for its delightful captivating twists.
You do all that work—invitations, shopping, preparing an awesome meal.
A wonderful evening you envision—one abounding in cordiality, universal involvement, and engaging conversation.
Instead, you realize that the evening could go flat. Rather than a triumph, conversation could lag—revived only by tired talk about pets, family, bills, costs, ailments, neighbors. Some people struggle to participate. Others incessantly monopolize. People leave appreciative of your efforts but relieved to go home.
Surely, you would like to increase the likelihood of the former over the latter.
My wife and I like having dinner guests. We too have faced these dilemmas.
Eventually this important advice we discovered from business experts advising professional dinner organizers: “By the way, if you don’t usually prepare topics for conversation, you should.” 1
But how does one comply with this advise? Is it by simply compiling a list of topics about which your guests may be interested?
We do not think so? Choosing conversation topics requires some consideration. Yet, it is not the most crucial factor of hosting a successful dinner.
In fact, with these provisos most any topic can do:
- “If it makes your guest uncomfortable, avoid it.”; and
- Present topics understandable but challenging across the social and educational status of your guests.
Does the above exclude religion and politics? Certainly not! If you and your guests are adult enough to speak of such with reasonable civil gentility, then go for it. (Disregard, however, if you live in Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, the Ayatollah’s Iran, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, Lukashenko’s Belarus, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or the likes.)
What then is that crucial factor? We believe it is preparing a topic within a format that best avoids these potential discussion derailments:
- The topics do not take;
- Some guests monopolize while others fail to participate;
- Conversation veers to uncomfortable tangents like gossip;
- A catty remark causes hurt;
- Veering the conversation back to more appropriate realms makes the host seem tyrannical.
But what formats avoid such? We considered Jeffersonian and Zeldin dinners, some popular dining formats.
For certain circumstances we perceive how they could work.
Nevertheless, they seemed inappropriate for our home dinners. A successful Jeffersonian, for example, seems to hinge upon having a scholarly somewhat authoritarian moderator. Such did not seem to fit a pleasant occasion with four to six neighbors and friends. The Zeldin dinner, on the other hand, elicits too much personal information from our guests.
Our solution is this: a text centered format.
The text could be written or vocal, digital or video-graphic.
When it is a book or books, the discussion would be much like that of a book club.
When it is journal articles, it would resemble the Sky News program “Press Review”. There a host moderates a discussion with prominent members of the British press. Together they focus on daily front page articles from assorted newspapers and tabloids.
Our texts can also include memorandums, videos, podcasts, movies, etc., or a combination of the such.
This alternative hosting format we call “Captivating Twists”.
It involves certain administrative prerequisites.
Several of these we accomplish in our invitation. For instance, in it we:
- We tell our guests that they are invited to a dinner discussion hosted and moderated by us.
- Second, we inform the guests of the discussion subject or subjects and the expected length of the event.
- Third, we note that preparing for the discussion will require their reviewing material, i.e., the text. If the material is a memorandum, article, video, podcast, etc., we include a link to a site or an attachment where they can view such. If it is a book, it is one that they have read or to which they have easy access.
- Lastly, we inform in the invitation that if they RSVP, we will promptly send them both the questions to be broached with the dinner’s itinerary.
Other administrative prerequisites include:
- Choosing the text, i.e. the book, articles, video, podcast, movie, memorandum, or combination of such;
- Writing the memorandum, if you choose to write your own;
- Drafting the discussion questions;
- Preparing the menu and itinerary.
Once completed, these administrative tasks provide the host and guests advantages.
The guests know the dinner’s topic(s) which allows them to confidently prepare. For this they have the necessary material, the questions, and the itinerary.
For the hosts the givens make it easier to enforce boundaries. If the discussion veers afield, whether of scope or time, the guests readily understand our bringing it back to the issues and itinerary. The act thus seems less draconian.
There are also other pluses for both guests and hosts.
Our format better assures an organized, meaningful discussion, in which everyone participates.
Also it creates captivating twists in guests’ and hosts’ interactions.
Seldom in our modern world do people have the opportunity to discuss the same text with others. They often get their information from particular sources toward which they incline. Seldom do they sit down together to talk about material from a shared source.
All of our guests have agreed to familiarize themselves with the same text.
To it they bring their own perspectives. Yet, these perspectives have a unified focus—the shared text.
Our format, also, encourages us to explore issues with others with whom we would not often have the opportunity. Seldom in most of our lives are we and others sufficiently versed on the same subject with people of different professional, educational, or social backgrounds. At our dinner everyone can confidently and competently discuss the issues at hand. All have had an opportunity to review the text and questions. The result is often refreshing perspectives being expressed.
There are, of course, disadvantages to our format.
One is that it requires more up front work for all involved.
The guests have additional preparing added to their busy lives.
The hosts have to identify or prepare a topic’s text plus prepare the questions and itinerary.
For the guests they are compensated with a good meal, conversation, and refreshing camaraderie.
The hosts on the other hand are compensated with the increased likelihood of presenting a fluid, organized, enjoyably rewarding evening.
But to lessen the hosts’ burden we present here a fully prepared topic. There is a sample invitation, a memorandum text, a list of questions, an itinerary, also a menu with recipes and shopping tips.
Hopefully, soon we will have other prepared topics available here.
If you have ideas about topics we might prepare, let us know.
In the meantime, feel free to use that presented.
If you do, please give us feed back on how well it worked for you.
Our hope is that it brings you a pleasurable dining experience, full of captivating twists.
- LeTournea University at letu.edu/aluni/dining-etiquette.html ↩︎