How to host a virtual dinner party... in self-isolation
Quarantine doesn’t have to mean the end of your social life. Try an online feast, writes Eleanor Steafel
And on the fourth day in isolation, they watched each other eat Cornettos on Facetime. This is what it has come to in my house, and do you know what? I’m convinced this is going to be the key to the next few months. None of us knows how we’re going to get through all this, but I spent Wednesday evening on a three-way video call to dear friends while we all cooked and then ate spaghetti carbonara in unison, and I’m here to tell you that it helped.
For a couple of hours we laughed and drank and occasionally managed to find things to talk about, aside from the fear and the madness.
We played a particularly absurd game where you make it look as though you’re passing a wine glass to each other between the little squares on your screen (pure comedy gold, let me tell you). We critiqued each other’s spaghetti-eating technique, exchanged grand plans for the people we are going to become during isolation (prize winning gardener, Fifa legend, sourdough genius, a person who has read the Hilary Mantel trilogy), and made predictions for what life might look like when this is all over.
Most of us had spent the week overhauling our work lives, cancelling special holidays and longplanned celebrations, not to mention worrying about various family members. There are harder things than these, but none of this is easy, and our virtual dinner party was just the kind of frivolous distraction we all needed.
Video mealtimes are quickly becoming a stalwart of the quarantine social life. If there is to be a silver lining to this crisis, it might be that we are being forced to use the internet how it was always meant to be used
– to connect with each other. And dinner seems as good a place as any to start.
Fun may have, quite rightly, been cancelled for the foreseeable. But who ever said you had to be in the same room as your loved ones to have a good time?
Your how-to guide to holding a virtual dinner party
1) Prep your tech
It’s 7.45pm, and six millennials have been attempting to conduct a group video call for some time now. Honestly, you’d think we’d know how to successfully operate Facetime, but it took a full 20 minutes and one spilt gin and tonic (note: don’t leave stiff drinks within reach of precariously placed ipads) to get everyone on the call. Factor in faffing time, and pick a platform everyone has already downloaded. Google Hangouts requires you to have a Google email address. Zoom is great once you’re logged on but takes a little time to set up. Whatsapp video and Facetime are simple(ish). And there’s a great app called House Party that also allows you to play group games. Virtual Pictionary anyone?
2) Pick a quick dish
If you’re all going to cook the same thing (and, oddly, there is something quite nice about eating the same meal at the same time), make it something that comes together quickly. Carbonara is the queen of speedy dinners, and it’s not a bad one to have in your repertoire at the moment. You could use any kind of cured pork product you can lay your hands on – they all tend to have a good long life on them. A couple of egg yolks, a little parmesan or whatever hard cheese you’ve managed to find, garlic, and some of that pasta you pretended not to stockpile.
3) Create a dinner party ambience
Clearly one of the chief benefits of being almost permanently at home is that the need to wear make-up or a bra is, like everything else, cancelled. Most days I’ve woken up, showered, thrown on what I’d call my “transitionals” – not pyjamas, but not exactly outside clothes either – eaten toast in front of my laptop, then simply moved like an anxious zombie from the kitchen counter, to the table, the sofa and back again for hours, hoovering up increasingly bizarre snacks. I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to apply mascara, put on a pair of earrings and lay the table properly. Lighting a candle and pouring a glass of wine felt a tiny bit miraculous. Try it, it’ll make you feel normal for a bit.
4) Begin the call when everyone starts cooking
Some people seem to log in only once everyone is seated and ready to eat. But then you have the problem of whether to go full restaurant etiquette and wait until everyone is assembled, or dive in because you don’t want your food to go cold. There’s also something nice about doing it all together. I love nothing more than people pottering about my kitchen having a drink while I finish cooking dinner, and though the kitchen will remain empty for the foreseeable, the virtual equivalent is almost as nice.
5) Enforce Ready Steady Cook rules
Everyone must, I repeat must, begin cooking at the same time. Having failed to stipulate that dinner shouldn’t be ready by the time we started the call, some were still boiling water while others tossed egg yolks through hot spaghetti with gay abandon. There was considerable debate over whether cream is acceptable in a carbonara, but I say go full Ainsley Harriott and let the people work with what they’ve got. No spaghetti but a packet of novelty pasta from last summer’s hen do? Make like it’s Ibiza 2019 and… ah, remember 2019? Anyway, moving on.
6) Book a date for the next one
We all need something to look forward to at the moment. Make a virtual dinner party with your loved ones a weekly event. After all, what else are you doing?