CLIP (TIM HAYWARD): My mother called me just before Christmas and said, "When you come down, do you know any way you can get pork knuckles?"

CLIP (LILAH RAPTOPOULOS): [LAUGHS]

CLIP (TIM HAYWARD): So I went to all my specialist butchers and called and I found some. And so mum and I had been cooking pork knuckle, which she got from her grandmother. It’s incredibly old fashioned. 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies it’s for eaters, I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. And this week we’re bringing you not one but two episodes of a podcast we really love, called Life and Art from FT Weekend, the flagship culture podcast of the Financial Times.

Dan Pashman: On this show, twice a week, host Lilah Raptopoulos brings in the Financial Times’ esteemed arts and culture experts to make sense of our time. Lilah talks with FT's long-time pop critics and food reviewers, arts editors, and historians. Today, we’re bringing you two of their food episodes — one about the idea of gluttony with restaurant critic Tim Hayward, and later on a conversation about how to design a great dinner party with food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little. Okay, here’s host Lilah Raptopoulos:

MUSIC 

Lilah Raptopoulos: This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos.

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: My colleague Tim Hayward writes about food professionally. He’s been our restaurant critic here at the FT for 12 years. Tim also makes food very successfully. He owns a bakery in Cambridge, and he’s put out eight books about cooking and making food from scratch. So he was pretty surprised recently when somebody called him a glutton. He thought, "Of course I’m a glutton. Do people still think that that’s a bad thing?" Today we’ve invited him to join us from London to defend gluttony, or at least to encourage us to embrace the pleasures of eating. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Tim, welcome to the show. It’s always such a pleasure to have you on. 

Tim Hayward: [LAUGHS] Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] Okay, so to start, can you tell me what happened? This is a few months ago, right? Who called you a glutton? 

Tim Hayward: Well, it sort of came up in conversation. I was chatting to a chef friend, and he just said, "You know, but you’re a professional glutton." I thought, well, yeah, but you know, "What do you mean? Why say that in that negative way?" 

[LAUGHING]

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. Did you think, "Does this person know what I do?"

Tim Hayward: Well, exactly. But it’s not just that because it made me go away and think about it, because I run a bakery in Cambridge, and we've got three or four branches. And what we do, we make cakes and sweet things that are all very delightful. And I realized that, of course, none of those are — they’re what you call in marketing "discretionary purchases". People aren’t coming in to buy them because they’re starving.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

Tim Hayward: They don’t need it for sustenance. They need it because it’s a pleasure and a joy.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Tim Hayward: And I realized then that if gluttony is bad, I’m a drug dealer!

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS]

Tim Hayward: But I’m not. And so we’ve got to find some way of repositioning gluttony, as it’s not really a terrible mortal sin. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, yeah. Let's just — I would love to linger on the definition. So the Oxford English Dictionary defines gluttony as the habit of eating and drinking too much.

Tim Hayward: Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos: But it feels sort of like the thing that you’re pushing back against is the excessive enjoyment of food. It’s not really just about the excessive eating of food. 

Tim Hayward: I think for me, it’s when people get moral about it.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Hmm.

Tim Hayward: I mean, when they first started listing sins, I think Song of Solomon or something like that’s got some of the earliest ones, they never mentioned gluttony at all. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: Absolutely not a problem.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

Tim Hayward: You know, lying to people or, you know, just doing unpleasant things with their oxen — I mean, those kind of things were fairly prescribed. That’s okay. But then suddenly it becomes this thing about — and I think it really hits on the idea that if people are really enjoying and getting into food, they’re possibly not thinking about suffering and going to heaven. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Hayward: I mean, that notable joyous fellow, Saint Thomas Aquinas actually ended up with a list of five separate ways you could commit gluttony. The five terms are Allaute, which is eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly; Nimis, which is eating food that is excessive in quantity; Studios, which is eating food that’s too daintily or elaborately prepared; Pripropere which is eating too soon or at inappropriate times; and, Ardenta which is eating too eagerly.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS]

Tim Hayward: And I mean, he actually bothered to — but you know, by that, by that point they were trying to find — almost getting down into the granularity of why this thing, all of us did that was really so nice and so pleasurable and enjoyable, how can we turn it into a sin? Oh, we’ll find a way.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS]

Tim Hayward: But no, you know, it isn’t.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: I mean, if I couldn’t eat food that was too luxurious, that was excessive in quantity, that was daintily or elaborately prepared at inappropriate times [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] and eat it eagerly, I’d be entirely out of a job. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] Right. 

Tim Hayward: I mean, people wouldn’t want to read anything I wrote. Anyway, so yes, I live in Cambridge. These are the kind of conversations you get into with people. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] Right, right. Okay. So before you go on, so what you’re saying is that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. 

Tim Hayward: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: But as you say, it’s not even one that you find in the early Christian texts that anywhere. 

Tim Hayward: Mm-hmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And then the other question you’re saying is just, like, why do we keep it around at all? Right? 

Tim Hayward: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Like we’ve changed our beliefs around so much.

Tim Hayward: Mm-hmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Why haven’t we changed our beliefs around this? 

Tim Hayward: Yes, I think so. And not just to sort of throw it out because we now know other things about gluttony. I mean, obviously, [Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.] we’re living in a world where our health systems are utterly crushed by the dangers of obesity and the way they affect people’s bodies. We’ve got a surplus of food. And therefore gluttony is a bad thing in some ways. But we have to question what we mean.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

Tim Hayward: The other thing that I suppose really brought it to my head was we’ve known for a while that the National Health Service is about to declare, I believe, next month, that lot of the new injectable weight reduction drugs will be available on the National Health Service. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Like Ozempic?

Tim Hayward: Yeah, exactly. And it’ll save a load of money for the National Health Service. It’s an all round, generally brilliant thing. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Tim Hayward: And I’m sitting here wondering, how are we going to find a way to really screw that up? Because morally, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to find some way of telling people that it’s somehow morally imperfect to cheat like that and inject something that — and of course, we’ve never really been in a position where we’ve ever been able to electively do away with a human desire. I mean, we’ve never experimented with a drug that completely suppresses libido or . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. That’s true. It’s — you know, it’s funny. Ozempic is an interesting one. I think about it a lot because it is bringing in this new era of like weight consciousness again. 

Tim Hayward: Hmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And in some ways, it’s good. People who really struggle with weight and have health problems that are related to it are taking them, and it helps them. But then on the other hand, now there’s people who are already thin that are taking them too and trying to be even thinner. And so I feel like it’s all going back to the same question over and over again, which is, how do we balance being healthy with having a happy, fulfilled, even kind of like tangible, sumptuous life?

Tim Hayward: Well, I don’t think the semaglutide drugs are going to wipe out people’s enjoyment of food. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: I don’t think they do that. They reduce appetite, but not in a way that’s going to be risky. I do know that there’s a lot of worry amongst the food manufacturers that people are not going to be so hungry so often, the amount of food sold may reduce. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Tim Hayward: I certainly think our advertising and marketing industries have spent the last, possibly 100 years advertising into greed, as it were ... 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Totally. 

Tim Hayward: Or encouraging greed and then fulfilling it. And they’re going to have some interesting questions to look at. But I think some of those questions are actually philosophical.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Tim Hayward: But it’s going to be really interesting, isn’t it?

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Tim Hayward: I mean, we’ve certainly, as long as my generation has been around, being thin was actually a privilege of the well-off, really.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Tim Hayward: Which is — that’s the first time that’s happened in history. Now, what are we going to do when everybody can afford to be thin and hot? I mean, that’s got to be terrible, isn’t it?

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS]

Tim Hayward: How on earth will the entire English class system be? It’ll fall apart. I have no idea. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] I know the American, too. Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: [LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: I know. [LAUGHS]

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: You know, Tim, that reminded me, I was talking to our food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little about this, and it feels like there’s a little bit of a cultural difference between where Americans are and where Brits are with this. And you tell me if you’re seeing it, too. But in the U.S., I feel like people are very focused on health. They’re focused on gut health, eating clean, drinking less, going to bed earlier, less processed food, all that stuff. But she said that in the U.K., it feels like you’re all in a sort of eff it mentality, that there’s a lot of smoking during dinner parties and press releases that restaurants are decidedly not doing Vegan-uary. [LAUGHS] 

Tim Hayward: Mm-hmm. And that’s absolutely right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos: That the U.K. sort of embraced gluttony a little bit more. 

Tim Hayward: But I think there’s a possibility that we’ve gone through it and come out the other side.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] Okay. 

Tim Hayward: I mean, I mean, the vegan thing in the U.K. was absolutely huge for about three years. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Tim Hayward: Many, many people, the entire catering industry, leaned into it really hard. I mean, I’ve most of my life known and deeply respected a few lovely vegans who’ve all been lovely vegans. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: And they’ve done it because they loved animals and didn’t want to pollute themselves with meat. And they’re still there, the same number of them. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: Whereas the millions and millions of people who were sort of part-time vegans, who felt it was okay to do it four days a week, have suddenly collapsed under the sort of the weight of absurdity of trying to keep that logic going. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Is there anything else that, now that you’ve written this piece as you’re going to restaurants and you talked a lot in your piece about how that actually reaching satiation and then pushing through it is part of the job. 

[LAUGHING] 

Tim Hayward: Yes. Well, I mean, I'm constantly trying to question what the restaurant experience is about.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: Funnily enough, I’ve been rereading something that was huge when I was at art college, which was Susan Sontag’s essay on camp. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Hmm. 

Tim Hayward: Because she was trying to find a way between high and low culture.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

Tim Hayward: And it strikes me that we need to find a way through that with food. I’ve been to several restaurants recently that were kind of knowingly self-mocking whilst being truly brilliant. And there’s a line in the essay somewhere it said where you just don’t trust people who take food too seriously. That’s just ridiculous.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

Tim Hayward: You also don’t want people who don’t take it seriously enough.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. [LAUGHS]

Tim Hayward: And if you can balance those two notions in your head — which I think is what I probably have to do for a living, if I’m ever going to be any good [Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.] and I think that’s intriguing me at the moment is trying to find that balance.

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: Tim, I would love to hear while we’re on the topic of gluttony, and while I have you about some food and meals that you enjoy the most, [Tim Hayward: Mm-hmm. Sure.] if we could do a sort of lightning round?

Tim Hayward: Sure. Yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay. What is the meal that’s given you the most sort of gluttonous pleasure [LAUGHING] in the last, say, three months?

Tim Hayward: That’s an absolutely great question. Well, so the answer is always it’s the last meal. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: The last one was always brilliant, and I love it. As long as that keeps going, I’m going to stay alive. That’s fine. But this one was particularly interesting because I went to a west African restaurant. And I had a meal that included a porridge made of the seeds of breadfruit. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Oh, cool. 

Tim Hayward: And it’s a marvelous, marvelous thing. And it comes with this tremendous story about during the Nigerian civil war, people were surviving on this stuff because it filled their bellies, and it was wonderful. And I loved the story. And I’m obviously making notes on this and thinking, this is great. This is tear-jerkingly intense. And then I left the place and I realized that my stomach was swelling, with the incredible amount of the stuff that I’d consumed because it was so delicious. And I was actually thinking, I’m going to go and be interviewed about gluttony now. This is the most gluttonous thing I’ve done in years.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] 

Tim Hayward: So yeah, it was, it was that. That was a pretty gluttonous lunch. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Amazing. What about — is there, like, a certain cuisine or type of dish that gives you that kind of sumptuous pleasure we’ve been talking about? 

Tim Hayward: I think you can sort of take it apart, parse it in different ways. I think, you know, when you have a very, very classical French meal in a French restaurant in France, which I’ve had the chance to do a couple of times in the last couple of years, and you think there’s nothing that’s ticking all of my cultural buttons as hard as this is.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHING] I agree. 

Tim Hayward: And then, for example, we have a lot of new Korean stuff happening in the U.K. at the moment. You know, and then you start going to Korean restaurants and you think, oh my God, there’s an entirely different culture with an entirely different approach to this.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: And my levels of gluttony and joy in this subject are as high, but different. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Hmm. Yeah, the number of dishes at a Korean meal feel ...  

Tim Hayward: Can be absurd. Absolutely. Whereas but on the other hand, for example, with Chinese food, where in the U.K. most Chinese food is in sort of the feasting tradition.

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] Right. 

Tim Hayward: I’m now finding myself going places and having a single dish of something in a much more sort of Chinese soul food way than I’ve ever experienced before. So that’s opening up to us as well. And those meals can be incredibly sumptuous. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Interesting. Yeah. For sure. What about at home, Tim? I know you do a lot of cooking at home from your Instagram. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Is there a trick to indulging an inner glutton of ours in our own kitchens? 

Tim Hayward: Just treat yourself well, honestly. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: Keep the freezer full of interesting things. Never keep it full of dull stuff. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. My last one is sort of related, but it’s — I just wrote this piece about reviving recipes that have gone extinct. 

Tim Hayward: Ohh. Lovely. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And I’m wondering if there’s an old family recipe that you go back to that’s just, like, very over the top. 

Tim Hayward: You know, that’s intriguing. My mother called me just before Christmas and said, "When you come down, do you know any way you can get pork knuckles?"

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] 

Tim Hayward: So I went to all my specialist butchers and called and I found some. And so mum and I had been cooking pork knuckle, which she got from her grandmother. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Wow. 

Tim Hayward: So years and years and years ago. And just finding our way back into that. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: And there’s so much in the liquid that the hock will be boiled in, and the gelatin that builds up and the way it sticks to your lips, and you can have it cold, you can have it hot, it’ll self jellify into its own charcuterie effectively if you just let it go. That is an amazing thing, and it’s incredibly old fashioned. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Tim Hayward: And yet then I find myself applying sort of modern feeling to it, and it’s lovely. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Oh, I love that. And it might give you gout. [LAUGHS] 

Tim Hayward: It’s almost certainly going to give me gout, but by the time we get there a little bit gout pill, and it’ll will be fine. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Exactly. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Tim, thank you so much. My very last question is just if there’s any final thought you want to leave listeners with, you know, like, what should we go away thinking about when it comes to enjoyment of food and over enjoyment of food even? 

Tim Hayward: Gosh, solely to be questioning.You know, if you, if you feel you’re being gluttonous, or you feel, or if you’re feeling guilty, the question is why?

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Tim Hayward: And sort of work back from there. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. That’s great. There's a thing I keep telling myself called, like, robot brain. Don’t use robot brain.

Tim Hayward: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: When it comes to the decisions you make  . . .  

Tim Hayward: No, don’t use robot brain. Yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And I find myself, now that I have a word for it, I’m finding it everywhere. [TIM HAYWARD LAUGHS] So, this is a great place for it. 

Tim Hayward: Well, there’s also — the other one is the limbic system, your lizard brain, which basically just responds.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Tim Hayward: I think you need to balance your robot brain with a little tiny bit of your lizard brain, which is just going to say, “Eat pork! Ahhhh. Lovely.” 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Pork knuckles.

[LAUGHING] 

Tim Hayward: Yeah!

Lilah Raptopoulos: Tim, this is such a delight, as always. Thank you so much. And please come back. 

Tim Hayward: It’s lovely to speak to you. Thank you. Goodbye.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That’s Tim Hayward talking with Lilah Raptopoulos. Tim wrote about gluttony for FT Weekend Magazine. Coming up, Lilah dissects the difference between British and American dinner parties, and gets advice on how to keep those parties simple. Stick around. 

MUSIC

 

+++ BREAK +++

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Before we get back to the show, I have an update on an episode we did a couple years ago. We had Chitra Agrawal on. She runs Brooklyn Delhi, the Indian inspired condiment and simmer sauce company. I've known Chitra for a long time. I love everything she does at Brooklyn Delhi. In fact, I specifically called for her tomato achaar in multiple recipes in my cookbook Anything's Pastable. But now, check this out, Brooklyn Delhi has a new product line out, “heat and eat” pouches that are only available at Whole Foods. They have flavors like Chickpea Tikka Masala and Black Bean Butter Masala, and they are so good. This is not an ad. I'm just shouting out Chitra and Brooklyn Delhi because I love everything they do. It's super high quality. The flavors are fantastic. And I want to add that Chitra wrote on Instagram that it’s been a huge lift for them getting this new line to all 500 Whole Foods stores. This has been years in the making and she really needs them to succeed! So go on down to your local Whole Foods and stock up on those "heat and eat" pouches from Brooklyn Delhi. They're usually in the global flavors aisle.

Dan Pashman: Okay, now back to Lilah Raptopoulos from Life and Art from FT Weekend.

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: My colleague Harriet Fitch Little is one of those people who’s outrageously talented at making things beautiful. I’m with her in the London studio, and even though we work together a lot and are internet friends, we’ve just met in person for the first time.

Lilah Raptopoulos: I feel that I already know that you are an expert at hosting and making dinner [HARRIET FITCH LITTLE LAUGHS] and that like you are an aesthetic genius and you always seem to be carrying a bouquet of wildflowers around. And even today you came to the studio and you brought me a little homemade muffin that you had made. You just know what you’re doing. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Thank you. [LAUGHS] It feels like those real sort of disgusting, domestic goddess territories, isn't it?

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, I know, 

Harriet Fitch Little: Like I just waft everywhere with, like, flowers and homemade muffins ... which I don't.

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: No, you’re cute. You’re also a genius brain and a complex figure.

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Harriet recently became our food and drink editor. As you can tell, she’s aware that this whole world of food and drinks can quickly turn into something a bit too precious. But she’s not precious or preoccupied with trends or making things perfect. Harriet’s also like this when it comes to hosting dinner parties. To her, a great dinner is simple. It’s about having your friends over and creating a really nice time in a way that feels like you. 

Harriet Fitch Little: I’m not very good at being the person who sort of, like, turns from person A to person B and says, well, you’ve got this in common. What I far prefer being is the person who’s, like, in the kitchen with lots of things, like, boiling over, who can sort of, like, occasionally, like, rush through the door and say something interesting and, like, top up people’s glasses. So I think that’s always what has drawn me to dinner parties as a form of hosting. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

MUSIC 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Today, Harriet gives us some hard-earned advice for throwing a nice dinner, no matter what your level of cooking or hosting experience is. We’ll also talk about how to put one on without totally losing your mind and also what a dinner party even is and who it’s actually for. This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. 

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: Harriet, welcome to the show. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Thank you. It’s so nice to be here. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: I’m curious to start, like, how long have you been hosting dinner parties, and what do you like about it? 

Harriet Fitch Little: Well, I think we might begin with, like, a difference in terminology, because I was thinking about dinner parties, and I was thinking about the way that you might talk about a dinner party as an American. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And I feel like you are imagining a situation where there are lots of people in a room who maybe a couple of them know each other, but basically, like, you’ve curated a group of interesting people who you think will get on. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: That is, like, the platonic idea of a dinner party in my head, yes. Like, oh, maybe I could set someone up at this dinner party?

Harriet Fitch Little: [LAUGHS] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Or maybe couples who don’t know each other might like each other at this dinner party?

Harriet Fitch Little: But I would say for the most part, when I talk about hosting dinner, what I am doing is cooking for friends. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And I actually I was quite worried that I was just like really sort of like a social shut-in before I came in to record this. So I asked my colleagues on the magazine, like, when you think about having a dinner party, who are you imagining is there? And everyone said that it was friends. And the one person, Cordelia Jenkins, who's the deputy editor of the magazine, said, you know, I know what’s happened here. Lilah is American. My husband is American, also a journalist, and he lives in London, and they are constantly at loggerheads over his definition of a dinner party. [Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.] Just getting a load of people who don’t know each other together in a room.

[LAUGHING] 

Harriet Fitch Little: And her definition of a dinner party, which is just like having friends over to have a good time. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay, so which one should we go with? I think the rules apply in bulk . . .  

Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah, I think all the things about hosting, perhaps with the exception of how do you sort of get people talking to each other, are more or less the same. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Because it’s like people having a good time at your house and making them feel that comfortable. That is just like the same across the board. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. Okay. So I thought that as we break down — before we break down, sort of like what other elements make up for it in terms of, like, the mood that you set and the food that you could make and the drinks and the wine and all that, I thought that maybe we could each talk through, like, a dream dinner party that each of us would throw.

Harriet Fitch Little: Okay. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: So not one of those dream parties where alive or dead, you could invite anyone you want. I don’t care. I want something more realistic. There’s, like, a dinner party that you would have at your house with the constraints of your home and sort of just the feeling that you would want to make, that stuff you would cook, the way the table would look ... 

Harriet Fitch Little: Okay. Have you thought of one for yourself as well? 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, I've been thinking about it. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Okay, interesting. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] 

Harriet Fitch Little: So I do think it’s got to be — I would say the run-up to Christmas. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Maybe sort of late November when everyone’s got that festive feeling, [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] but no one sort of totally — people aren’t going into the season of, like, every night’s a Christmas party. Like, they’ve got a bit of life left in them. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Harriet Fitch Little: All my very good old friends are there. I’d have some music on, but it would be very quiet. I can give a specific album recommendation. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Sure.

Harriet Fitch Little: I think that Prince’s album, which is called a Piano and a Microphone, which I think was released — it’s like demos that were released after his death, I believe, is the perfect dinner party soundtrack. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Beautiful. 

Harriet Fitch Little: But, you know, personal tastes may vary. [LAUGHS] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: We’ll put it in the show notes for people.

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay. Mine is deep winter, like February .

Harriet Fitch Little: Deep winter. Hmmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Everyone’s sort of  ...   

Harriet Fitch Little: No one’s got anything left to do . . .  

Lilah Raptopoulos:  . . . losing their will to live. Yeah, exactly. But they all want to be cozy and everyone’s around, and they want something to do. And probably, like, eight people squished into my little kitchen, like around my table. 

Harriet Fitch Little: So you want everyone to be a bit on top of each other? 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, like not really enough space so everyone really has to kind of talk. I don’t know who’s going to be there, but I kind of want in some way to have flagged to these friends that they should come in the spirit of having, like, the best night of their life.

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Because I don’t really want to do — I don’t want to talk about how New York is expensive [Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah.] and rent has gone up. I don’t know, but you can’t force that. So [Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah.] that’s just part of my dream scenario. 

MUSIC 

Harriet Fitch Little: And then . . .  

Lilah Raptopoulos: Food?

Harriet Fitch Little: Okay. In my dream, it’s happening on a Saturday evening, and I’ve had the day off work on a Friday, so I’ve already had a day to relax. And I’ve got all of Saturday to do some shopping. I want to be able to enjoy the getting ready and the just sort of like mooching about like listening to a podcast [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] and turning the kitchen into an absolute mess. I think if you are going to do something exciting for a dinner party, like something sort of like, a bit splashy and technical, it probably makes sense to do it more towards the beginning so that you don’t have to disappear halfway through a meal for a really long time. And I think like when people are having drinks anyway, it’s kind of nice to be drifting in and out again. It’s just clearly all I want to do, [LAUGHS] to drift in and out. So I think I’d have some sort of spritz for when people arrive.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm.

Harriet Fitch Little: And ideally a spritz that people sort of like weren’t particularly familiar with. So maybe like Lillet, which is a fortified wine, which makes a delicious spritz.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Nice.

Harriet Fitch Little: And everyone will say, oh, this is a lovely spritz. Is it Aperol? And you say no, you know?

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right.

[LAUGHING] It’s this thing, you know, but also you don’t quite know it, which is like the comfort zone that you’re trying to, like — I guess that you want things that are, like, comfortable and familiar but also just, like, a bit different.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: Like, a bit more interesting. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, that’s the sweet spot. 

Harriet Fitch Little: [LAUGHS] And then I would do a lot of dips, and I would not make my own bread. I would buy some nice bread. I probably wouldn’t have separate plates for people eating that. I think, like, having starter plates is maybe just like unnecessary faff. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And then I think for the main meal, I was sort of imagining that this is early winter. I don’t think you can do much better than some sort of big bits of meat, some sort of like, hunk of beef or pork or lamb with dauphinoise potatoes and probably some sort of like caramelized carrots. And then I don’t really do desserts, I would say.

Lilah Raptopoulos: No? 

Harriet Fitch Little: No. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: What would you do at the end of the meal? 

Harriet Fitch Little: In my dream dinner party, the Turkish shop on my high street hasn’t closed because of extortionate rent hikes. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Which is what has just happened in reality. And I would get some of the baklava that they sell there. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Perfect. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And we would have that with coffee and probably dessert wine, which I discovered recently, and is delicious. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Nice. 

MUSIC 

Harriet Fitch Little: Tell me what you’re eating?

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay. I’m probably not as good at figuring out like what all of the dishes will be, but I know what my showstopper is going to be. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And — ugh. I did a late winter thing. So actually, this might not be possible, but the showstopper is this Armenian dish called Ghapama, which is this just big pumpkin that’s stuffed with, like, rice and dried fruits. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Mm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And then you put the whole pumpkin into the oven and then it cooks and then you cut it open. But this is winter, so we’re going to do stuffed cabbage. [LAUGHS] 

Harriet Fitch Little: And because those are basically delicious. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. And we’ll do stuffed cabbage with like pilaf so stuffed with meat and rice and spices, and then like a pilaf on the side and then the juice from the meat sort of like, gets the pilaf kind of wet and then probably some, like, big wintery salads.

Harriet Fitch Little: Mmm. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And then at the end, maybe there’s, like, some almond cookies and then like, a bunch of citrus, like oranges and grapefruit and stuff like that just on the table. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Oh, nice! Something fresh. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yes, something fresh. And then maybe I’ll do a dessert wine [Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah.] or like an Amaro. And then at the end, maybe we pile all the dishes up, and then I lend everyone a book from my book shelf and then they leave. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: And then the next day, I don’t work, and I just sit in the mess. 

Harriet Fitch Little: That’s — I think after dinner, if I had enough people, I would play Werewolf, which is also known as Mafia. It’s a game that, like, if I tried to explain it, the editors would definitely cut it out because it would be so boring to explain. But it is the most fun [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. ] to have at a dinner party. If you’ve got about eight people. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Perfect. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And otherwise, I’d probably try and teach people how to play a card game like Racing Demons. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Oh, that’s a nice idea. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: To have a card game at the end of the night. 

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: So we’ve concocted our dream dinner parties. So there’s tons of little tips in it, but I kind of want to break down what we’ve learned. The first being just if we can talk through what to cook. Like you’ve told me that now’s a great time for bad cooks to be good dinner party hosts. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Yes. [LAUGHS] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Can you tell me why? 

Harriet Fitch Little: Well, because if you look at what even restaurants in London are doing, you know, I went out to one of the really fashionable new Italian restaurants in London called Brutto last week, and the starter was, you know, anchovies on sourdough. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And they charge £10 for it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. [LAUGHS]

Harriet Fitch Little: And this is like the most popular starter they serve and, you know, everyone’s putting it all over their Instagram, but it’s anchovies on sourdough.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Like both those things, one of them comes in a tin and one of them comes from a bakery, so that it’s very easy to recreate the sorts of foods that are currently in fashion. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Butter on radishes? [LAUGHS]

Harriet Fitch Little: Butter on radishes. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Also. 

[LAUGHING] 

Harriet Fitch Little: So if you’re a bad cook, all you need to do is go to the market and buy some really lovely tomatoes [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] and slice them up and put them on a plate and scatter a few leaves over them. [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] Then you’ve sort of already done lots of restaurants in London are doing. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. Salt. Olive oil. That’s it. Yeah. Great. Could you give us some other examples of sort of simple dishes that could work well together on a table for a dinner party? 

Harriet Fitch Little: Well, I think you just need to work out what the main thing you want to cook is and sort of put all your attention on to that and then just put a few things that are, like, simple but eye-catching around the outside. So if you want to do something like, you know, you buy a whole fish, which looks sort of terrifying, but it’s actually, like, very easy to cook. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yes. And kind of a showstopper. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And a showstopper. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And you just put that on a bed of potatoes. Then all you need to serve with that is, you know, an easy, like, green salad and everyone will be very happy.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: I also think if you really can’t cook at all, then I believe that, you know, fondue is always due for a comeback. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: That's a good idea. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And it sort of fits with your idea of a dinner party, which is lots of people sort of hunched cozily around a tiny table eating fondue. You’ve got to be like ... 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Close. [LAUGHS] 

Harriet Fitch Little: Almost too close for comfort with the heating bills going up. It’s probably quite a good one.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: And I actually think you can just like — you can cook anything, can’t you? Because what we’re talking about is just like putting a meal on the table.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: The people are happy to be there.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: The only thing, and maybe Americans don’t do this in the same way, but I think the only thing that makes me feel really miserable at a dinner party is when the person who’s done all the cooking spends all that time, like, apologizing for the cooking.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: Imagine you’re in a restaurant and, like, the waiter puts stuff down and was just like, "Oh, sorry, the kitchen had a bad night tonight."

[LAUGHING]

Harriet Fitch Little: And, like, this isn’t — like, this didn’t turn out how we wanted it to.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. I also wanted to sort of focus in on drinks. You said that in your dream dinner party it was a spritz but not with an Aperol but something a little more mysterious. What . . . After that, what happens? Are you doing cocktails? Are you assuming wine? Are you .... Are people bringing a case of beer? 

Harriet Fitch Little: So I think I’ve totally changed my thinking on this by virtue of working on this huge wine issue of the magazine with our wine critic Jancis Robinson. Because I think previously what I have said to you is I normally try and have a bottle of white and a bottle of red in. And other than that, I'd sort of like take what people gave me.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. 

Harriet Fitch Little: I think now I probably would try and think about the wine and try and, like, serve a consistent wine, like a couple of bottles of the same thing and to have across the majority of a meal. And I sound so pretentious, but I’m just gonna say it. I’ve been drinking a lot of Pinot Noir recently. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Mm-hmm. That’s allowed. It's allowed. It’s good. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And I think that’s a nice red to have because it’s light enough that, you know, anyone who doesn’t like anything sort of really like full bodied is going to be fine with it. And perhaps it like goes a bit more easily with some things you might see as white wine foods. So I guess probably what I do now, post my sort of wine discovery this summer, is get a couple of bottles of that in and then if other people want to drink other things, then they can bring it. You see, what I’ve done for most of the time is just, like, leave the alcohol to other people. 

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: Okay, so we got food. We have vibe. We have drink. This question isn’t for me because I have FOMO all the time, and I’m happy for people to basically end up sleeping over if they want to. But for the introverts among us or for the people who like personal space, how do you politely get someone to leave at the end of your dinner party? 

Harriet Fitch Little: Well, I believe that you actually already kind of have answered this question for yourself, Lilah, because ... 

Lilah Raptopoulos: I give everybody a book. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Yes! 

Lilah Raptopoulos: [LAUGHS] 

Harriet Fitch Little: This is it. Like, I have learned that the best way, the nicest way to get people to leave, which is also fine, by the way, I’m not saying like I hated them being there in the first place. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Harriet Fitch Little: I would have loved them being there. Like, it’s not this sort of like, oh, isn’t it terrible having people over? But it is good for people to leave ... 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right, it is. It is. 

[LAUGHING]

Harriet Fitch Little: Eventually. And the thing you always need to say is, "Oh, before you go, I really wanted to . . . ," and in your case, it is give them a book. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Right. 

Harriet Fitch Little: But I think there’s normally something that you’ve spoken about over the course of an evening that you sort of like genuinely would like to find or remember or . . .  

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. I wanted to get you that name of that wine [Harriet Fitch Little: Exactly.] that I liked or whatever. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: I mean, beyond that, I’ve got no idea. Like, a person who doesn’t sort of pick up on that as a hint [Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.] then you know, I’m as lost as you are. I’ll probably like, yeah, find them sleeping on my sofa the next morning. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, yeah. 

MUSIC

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. My last question, Harriet, is — we’ve talked a little bit about this — but how do you make sure you’re having a good time at your own party? How do you make sure you’re not overwhelmed that it feels at the end, like, I’m glad I did that. I’m glad I brought people together and I feel like we are connected in some way. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Yeah, I think most people get overwhelmed but not by the bit where people are there. They get overwhelmed by the bit beforehand with sort of like thinking about it, and they’ve got to cook. And, you know, I told my partner that I was coming on to record this with you, and he said, like, I’d have to tell you, "You don’t have to bake your own breads," which has become a saying in our relationship, but like you do not have to do the most.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah.

Harriet Fitch Little: But references a specific occasion where I had like a couple of people coming over very casually, and I’d had an extremely busy week at work. And I got up at five in the morning and he sort of, like, found me when he got up at seven crying over the focaccias. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Aww. 

Harriet Fitch Little: I was genuinely poking holes in the focaccia. And my tears were filling along with the salt. He was like, “What are you doing?” He said, “You know, you don’t have to make focaccia!” 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Because it’s an obvious thing to say. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: But sometimes you need to hear it. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Sometimes you need to hear it. So I think basically it’s about, like, working out, like, what form of preparing for a meal you’ll enjoy and basically, like, trying to do that version of it. Because there are also so many things you can buy that people like. You know, I said before that I like getting baklava for dessert. Or if there’s someone near to you that does really nice bread, like, that’s a lovely thing that you can actually buy. And, like, if you want to make it special, you can say, you know, I got this bread from this place that’s really nice.

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Like taste it. It’s lovely bread. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: And that’s a sort of nice an effort to have gone to as having, like, baked it with your own tears. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. 

[LAUGHING] 

Harriet Fitch Little: That really was a one off. 

[LAUGHING] 

Lilah Raptopoulos: So be easy on yourself. Like make it ... Yeah. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Be easy on yourself. Just like there is no point in doing this thing if you’re not having a good time. The reason I like hosting dinner parties is that I don’t just enjoy having people over, I enjoy spending a day watching a film, listening to a podcast, like slowly bringing a meal together in the kitchen, having an excuse to tidy my flat. So if you’re not sort of getting those things out of it, then don’t do it. Go out to a restaurant instead. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah. Maybe my very last question is when can I come to your house for a dinner party? Okay, when?

[LAUGHING]

Harriet Fitch Little: Unfortunately, I moved out of London, so most of my dinner parties now are with my 80-year-old neighbors and that brings with it a whole other set of sort of, you know, dietary restrictions and challenges that are very different from the ones that you encounter in London. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: Yeah, well, okay. 

[LAUGHING]

Harriet Fitch Little: You can join us. 

Lilah Raptopoulos: I'll join you. Actually, that sounds really fun, and I will be there. Harriet, this is such a delight. Thank you for being on the show. 

Harriet Fitch Little: Thank you. 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That was Harriet Fitch Little, we have links to some FT pieces about dinner parties in the show notes. If you liked these conversations, Life and Art from FT Weekend is available wherever you get your podcasts. In it Lilah often interviews some of the world’s top creators, from David Byrne to designer Jonathan Adler, to chefs Mashama Bailey and Eric Ripert. If you’re interested in questions like, why do we love women’s basketball? And how could I develop my taste in art? Then you’ll love this podcast. Check out Life and Art from FT Weekend and connect with the show on X at @FTWeekendPod.