There is, I believe, a case to be made for imperfect dinners. The ones where the oven betrays its office, where the sauce slides off the plate with the help of a careless elbow, where one adds a mismatched chair because a guest has had the delicate audacity to arrive with a companion. These are the dinners, against all logic, that we remember.
The others — the perfect dinners, orderly, photogenic — fade as quickly as they came. We retain a vague sense of success, like an examination passed without incident. But what is left to tell, two days later, of a table where nothing escaped the host's control? Nothing, except that they no doubt laboured a great deal to achieve it.
One notices that the eras most carefully guarded against disorder — the court of Versailles, the ceremonial dinners of the Third Republic, certain English drawing rooms of another age — have left behind, above all, the memory of a distinguished tedium. Whereas Madame de Sévigné's great tables, which sometimes ended in outbursts that posterity has thought it fitting to forget, those tables we still imagine, two centuries on, with a certain amusement.
There is, in imperfection, a form of generosity that perfection knows nothing of. The flawless table intimidates; no one dares set down their glass, still less help themselves to seconds. One whispers, one measures one's gestures, one looks at the host as one would look at a schoolmistress. Perfection sets a distance — and distance, as anyone can see, is the very opposite of hospitality.
The slightly overflowing table, the slightly alive one, frees the guests at once. A drop of wine on the cloth, and each person feels permitted to exist fully. The evening can become what it had promised to be: a true meeting, and not a performance.
We have been sold, in recent years, the idea of a seamless elegance, without flaw, photographable from every angle. That, it must be said, is not elegance at all. True elegance consists in taking care without appearing to; in laying a beautiful table and then letting the evening overflow it; in being the first to laugh when a dish is upset, rather than treating it as a private tragedy.
So our wish for your dinners is plainly stated. Let the candles drip. Let someone knock over a glass. Let the dessert be forgotten in the refrigerator until midnight rediscovers it. Let the conversation stretch well past its appointed hour. And let the tablecloth, above all, keep a few traces of it all.
— The Host