The Worst Meals Ever Served
at Someone Else’s Dinner Party

You are invited to a dinner party by Rob and his wife, Patricia, who have just returned from a cooking class in Tuscany. Patricia announces, with great confidence, that the experience changed her life. She now cooks with anchovies. You count at least thirty-six of them arranged atop a dish she describes, on the evening’s hand-written menu card, as “a light summer pasta.” The pasta was not light. It was a dense, briny experience that tasted like the Mediterranean Sea had been invited to dinner and simply refused to leave.

The wine was bland and grassy, something Patricia just discovered from an Iowa vineyard that used to be a hog farm. And yes, that is exactly what it tasted like. You wanted to hold your nose when you sipped but settled for simply not breathing. You made this work for an entire glass.

When a guest across the table gently mentioned he had a fish allergy, Patricia looked genuinely confused. “Oh,” she said, studying the dish with great care, “but these are Italian anchovies.” She gave him a second portion of bread. The bread was smothered in anchovy paste. He ate it. You watched him eat it. Nobody said anything. This is civilization.

Dinner is at six o’clock. Derek told you this himself, confirmed it twice, and sent a reminder text. You arrive at Derek’s at five-fifty with a bottle of wine and a reasonable appetite. Derek is at the smoker, wearing a custom apron that reads GRILL SERGEANT, and he tells you with great serenity that the brisket just needs a few more minutes.

By seven-thirty you have consumed two glasses of wine on a stomach that contains only a small bowl of mixed nuts Derek put out “to tide you over.” The nuts are gone. You have started eating the decorative crackers that were clearly not meant to be eaten. At eight-fifteen, Derek emerges from the yard with the brisket. It requires a knife that is not available. Derek owns only steak knives and one decorative ceremonial sword purchased at a Renaissance fair, which is now — in genuine desperation — being carried to the table and seriously considered.

The outside is coal-black. The inside is, according to a guest’s meat thermometer app, “an optimist.” Derek describes it as “rustic.” You agree it is rustic. You have two bites. Derek has thirds and tells you how long it smoked.

Marguerite invited you to a “nourishing gathering.” This is not the same as a dinner party and you did not know that yet. You arrive expecting something warm. Something cooked. Something that has at some point in its recent history made contact with heat. What you receive instead is a series of vegetables that have simply declined to be cooked.

The centerpiece is a “rawsagna” — lasagna sheets made of thinly sliced courgette, layered with cashew paste and something Marguerite calls “activated tomato essence.” You ask what that means. She explains that it is a tomato that has been left in the presence of crystals for several hours. You nod as though this is information you can use. There is also a dehydrated cracker that tastes of nothing but the memory of bread — a rumor of carbohydrate, a ghost of something that was once filling.

A small child at the table quietly eats an entire paper napkin. He seems to be the most satisfied person in the room. You watch him with something close to envy.

You step into Todd and Renee’s house and the smell hits you before the hello does. It is the smell of a very committed science fair. Todd and Renee discovered fermentation the previous spring, and by December they have fermented, by your conservative estimate, everything they own. Dinner opens with a shot glass of homemade kombucha that Todd describes as “aggressively matured” and which tastes like vinegar has enrolled in a philosophy degree and emerged changed.

The main course is a kimchi stew made with kimchi that Todd has been developing since March. He says “well-developed” with the quiet pride of a man who believes in what he has made. You take a bite. You make the face you have been practicing since Patricia’s anchovy pasta — the face that says “this is complex” rather than “what is happening in my mouth.” It is a close call.

For dessert there is a jun tea. Nobody at the table knows what jun tea is. Nobody asks. You all drink it in silence, eyes forward, the way soldiers drink things in situations they did not choose.

Brandon texts you the week before to say dinner is going to be “next level.” You appreciate his enthusiasm. You arrive to find a charcuterie board that has been replaced by an enormous slab of butter onto which Brandon has pressed herbs, garlic, and — inexplicably — several gummy bears. You are told to “just drag your bread through it.” You do. The gummy bears do not improve.

The main course is pasta that Brandon has cooked directly in energy drink because, he explains, “the sugar caramelizes and it’s actually kind of insane.” It is insane. It is neon orange and vibrating slightly. You eat it with the expression of someone completing a sponsored challenge. The smoked cocktail arrives next — a glass dome is lifted to release what Brandon describes as “artisanal hickory smoke” and which the smoke alarm describes as a four-alarm emergency. You evacuate briefly. The neighbors come to their windows.

The pickle cupcakes arrive after the alarm is silenced. Brandon watches your face carefully as you bite in, hoping for a reaction. You give him one. You feel that he has earned it.

Genevieve has a fine dining background. She mentions this three times before you sit down, twice during the amuse-bouche, and once while presenting the third course, which is a single scallop the size of a coat button resting on a smear of parsnip foam the color of defeat. You photograph it because there is nothing else to do with it.

The fourth course is a beet purée, three lentils, one quail egg, and a microgreen — placed, you watch this happen in real time, with actual tweezers. Genevieve calls it “abundance reimagined.” You nod. You take a bite. The bite is finished. There is nothing left on the plate. The plate is enormous. The food occupied approximately four percent of it. You consider licking the parsnip foam but decide against it on the grounds that Genevieve is watching.

By the sixth course you are calculating whether the sum of all courses thus far exceeds a medium bag of crisps. It does not. You smile at everything. You call it “refined.” You stop at a petrol station on the way home and eat an entire Cornish pasty standing up in the car park, and it is the best thing you have consumed all evening.

Claudette has spent the entire evening managing a dinner that, while earnest, has not gone entirely to plan. The soup was lukewarm. The chicken was pink in a way that generated private conversation. The pavlova meant for the third course arrived during the second and was quietly removed. You have been very supportive. You are tired.

Then Claudette appears from the kitchen carrying something with both hands and with the focused expression of a woman delivering a reliquary. She sets it on the table and announces it is a Traditional English Trifle from her grandmother’s recipe. You look at it. It has structurally compromised itself at some point in the last hour. The sponge has absorbed the sherry so completely it has ceased to exist as a solid object. The custard and cream have reached a diplomatic arrangement that suits neither of them individually. The hundreds-and-thousands on top have rearranged themselves into a pattern that one guest describes as a Rorschach test and another describes as a cry for help.

Claudette serves it with a soup ladle. This turns out to be the correct tool. You take a bite. Then another. You realize, with genuine surprise, that it is absolutely, outrageously delicious. Everyone has seconds. Someone has thirds. Claudette receives a standing ovation she does not fully understand but accepts with great dignity.