The standing dinner

We live in the age of friendship. Never has so much importance been placed on friendly relationships of all kinds as in recent years. Being able to count on a large group of “friends” is a point of honor, a sign of success or, at the very least, self-actualization.

Thus are born the categories: city friends, weekend friends, vacation friends, hobby friends, and then business, cultural, party, union, alternative, off. Social relationships cultivated so intensely involve, necessarily, encounters that culminate, in the vast majority of cases, in More or less planned lunches and dinners., more or less improvised.

When one meets away from home, the commitment is quite limited (apart from the prohibitive amounts of bills). One goes to the innkeeper one trusts, consults the food guide, follows the advice of a few friends.

The invitations home

At home, however, things get complicated. A little for those who invite (but it is their choice and they know what they are up against) and a lot for those who are invited. It may happen, in fact, that one accepts hospitality without much thought, but the fact always determines, inevitably, the automatic triggering of the reciprocity mechanism: one must reciprocate. And there is no mind more confused than that of the guest at heart when he realizes that he has to arrange something in his own home.

The first idea is to organize a pharaonic and total lunch, to go down in the annals of gastronomy, bombastic with French names, where winking vocabulary pops up here and there, such as caviar (lumpfish roe), champagne (the prosecchino), truffle (the “truffle” tube sauce), etc. But immediately enthusiasms are dampened, considering the size of the table, the glasses available, the insufficiency of chairs, and the disconsolate and limited size of the largest frying pan locked up in the kitchen cabinets. Someone even goes rummaging through wedding gifts that never came out of the packaging, and the despondency grows.

Everything and now

Added to this is the legitimate desire of those who embark on the venture, to try to meet all the requirements of social obligation with a single move. Ma i conti son difficili a tornare.

Unless you slip into the infamous “standing dinner.”

The advantages are many: there is no chair problem, the atmosphere immediately becomes informal, so much so as to justify paper napkins and plastic plates, cutlery and glasses, no limit is placed on the number of invitations, the mess will make certain gastronomic uncertainties of the hostess go unnoticed. Ideal.

So here are the unfortunate crammed into a few rooms to work out, amid smiles and handshakes, strategies for survival and comfort, eyeing benches, chests of drawers and loudspeakers-anything that might turn, once the ice is broken, into a seat or foothold.

We eat!

The key moment is the arrival of food on the table. Usually, the hosts, with the noble purpose of not neglecting their guests by spending the evening in the kitchen, take the thought of the foodstuffs out of their minds by serving everything at once, appetizers, entrees, salads (how many salads!), main courses and dessert. And the crush around the buffet immediately becomes chaotic, the plates loaded with food to the hilt (given the air there is a risk of having a few courses blown off), piled up and mixed with each other in defiance of any banal gastronomic rule.

The fastest run to grab a windowsill, the piano keyboard, a free shelf in the bookcase. All the others begin an awkward, moving dance in search of a balance they will never find. Their plate in the left, which flexes under the weight of the food and scalds. In the right the glass, which must not be gripped vigorously or it will crumple. In the same hand also a fork, held between the thumb and ring finger. While bread can be held, if it is sliced, between the knuckles of the index and middle fingers.

The (lost) challenge to Newton’s laws

Succeeding in this would all be solved if food did not always, invariably require, the aid of more efficient cutlery than the plastic ones provided.

The less sure-handed guests spill everything on themselves. The refined skip dinner. Most patients get on a waiting list for the armrest of a chair. The wildest creativity is unleashed in everyone: it turns out that the mouth can be used not only for eating but also for holding, temporarily, the fork, a breadstick, a celery stick taken from the crudité tray. One looks for ravines where to temporarily rest the glass certain to find it again, alone and untouched, after a few minutes. The pockets of the jacket become too strong a temptation to store everything that is dry and does not leave too much residue. Someone defies the chill of the night and conquers the terrace, with its windowsills, drying rack, washing machine, all unexpected and wonderful footholds.

The all-honey sweethearts, hinting at the intention of erotic transgressions, slip into the hosts’ bedroom, scan coats and furs from the bed and set, quietly, on the bedside table.

Around midnight it is all a chorus of praise, “What a beautiful evening!”

Freely excerpted from “RuvidaMente.com,” courtesy of author Stefano Milioni https://www.milioni.com/controcucina/la-cena-in-piedi/