A French Dinner Party Style Gains Ground in the US

Is there a platonic ideal for a medium-sized gathering of people? The cocktail hour has plenty to recommend it, including a lack of fixed seating and the ability to dazzle guests with a good drinks selection. But there’s a drawback to that as well: even if a cocktail hour is not capped at exactly 60 minutes, it’s still an inherently brief function. Dinner parties address that issue, but also require a lot more work — and can sometimes go on for a little too long. There’s a reason filmmaker Luis Buñuel made multiple films about dinner parties gone horribly wrong.

That search for something situated somewhere between these two poles might help explain the growing popularity of a French export, the dînatoire (technically, that’s short for “apéro dînatoire”) in the United States. Earlier this year, Air Mail’s Harrison Vail explored why a growing number of people and organizations are enamored by this style of event. Vail pointed to one of the advantages of the dînatoire in particular: that “guests will not be anchored to a formal dinner placement,” which creates more flexibility in guests’ ability to come and go as needed.

The Air Mail piece also posits a very understandable candidate for why more event planners and guests are embracing the dînatoire: the way that the pandemic changed our relationship with time. And it certainly seems like dînatoires are showing up in high-profile places: earlier this fall, Courvoisier held two such events in Atlanta and Houston.

The Drinking Culture of France

While the pandemic may have boosted the popularity of the dînatoire, this style of event was already earning attention in the years before it as well. In a 2019 article for The Washington Post, Ann Mah — someone who knows plenty about France’s dining culture — noted the dînatoire‘s growing popularity in France. Food writer Marie Asselin described this kind of meal to the Post as “a full meal of small bites.” And that might also help explain why so many are opting to hold this style of event: after all, that sounds delicious.