How does Boston feel about the dinner party resurgence?

With the worst of the pandemic behind us, one thing is clear in the dining world right now: More than ever, people want to connect over good food, and not just at restaurants. 

It seems the dinner party is back, reborn a couple of years ago in order to bring people together in a comfortable space. 

This isn’t your parents’ dinner party. Dinnerware is sometimes mix-matched or chipped, they take place in cramped apartments without dining rooms, and maybe it playfully calls for a theme around a particular food, like soup or tinned fish.

Some people in Boston and other cities have made a business out of it. Supper clubs are not a new concept and are slightly different from dinner parties — though these words are sometimes used interchangeably depending on the organizer. Both dinner parties and supper clubs can be as casual as a potluck-style setting, or maybe the host is in control of a more elaborate menu. Sometimes supper clubs are helmed by professional chefs, cooking up prix fixe menus in a rented space.

Also depending on the event and the host, they’re an opportunity to meet strangers.

The Harvard Crimson reported from the scene of a supper club in December called Dinner with Friends in Boston, in which its host typically charges $30 for the seven or eight guests to attend the intimate dinner. 

There’s also the Aperitivo Society, which does a mix of assisting people hosting dinner parties at their homes and holding private supper club events at restaurants. The latter is often organized in a way where guests who do not know each other come together.

Then there are chefs like Kendall DaCosta, who hosts a monthly supper club called Out of Many One People, a way to cook creatively without a brick-and-mortar space. 

If paying for someone else to do the work isn’t what you’re looking for, there are plenty of tips out there right now for how to throw your own dinner party, from simple to elaborate. There are even stores and TikTok accounts all about helping people get the aesthetic of a dinner party just to their liking.

We want to know: Are you into this dinner party or supper club craze? Answer our poll below, and tell us your thoughts in the form.