‘If things don’t go to plan, get the crisps and dips out’
Dinner parties. The term can’t help but conjure visions of Hyacinth Bucket fussing over napkin rings and place settings. But radio and TV presenters Alice Levine and Laura Jackson are keen to set the record straight.
Over the past four years, the pair, who met at a jumble sale, have devoted any spare time from their respective Radio 1 and ITV2’s Take Me Out: The Gossip hosting duties to cooking for paying guests at their London supper club.
“I remember being at university and having people round for dinner so I don’t think dinner parties have all those Eighties connotations of it being avocado mousse or melon and Parma ham now,” says Levine.
“It’s a very modern way to have all your friends around the table and have a catch-up. You go to a restaurant and you’ve got to be out at a certain time and maybe the wine is a bit too expensive, or maybe there’s a vegetarian and there isn’t a vegetarian option.
“With a dinner party, you call the shots. It’s just about having all your friends around the kitchen table and entertaining.”
And now they’ve compiled their meal collections into their first cookery title, Round To Ours. They’re clear the book isn’t a onestop shop for definitive recipes; it’s more a collection of meals for loosely themed food events, including hungover brunches, movie nights, late summer barbecues and summer garden parties.
Neither author is formally trained in the kitchen, nor too proud to admit that sometimes things don’t go to plan - like, for example, when it took 12 attempts to make a successful lemon tart.
“Our evenings are about people leaving and thinking, I’ve had such a fun time, I’ve been well looked after and the food’s been plentiful.
“It’s not about having a cordon bleu experience, and with dinner parties, too, it’s about you making an effort and making people feel wanted and special, so if something goes wrong, you have to laugh it off.”