For centuries, as a dinner party guest you ate what you were served. Nobody dreamed of calling up their host in advance demanding what they would like on the menu. This is one reason why the dinner party somehow made it through the 1980s era of Tom Wolfe’s ‘Social X Rays’ – Mid-Atlantic society-types who ate nothing and resembled skeletons. Previous threats to the dinner party included the first drink driving laws, which Bron Waugh claimed ruined country social life. Then came the cocaine diet guest (no food touched), who has been spiritually succeeded by the equally annoying Ozempic-jabber, bragging to their hostess about how ‘unhungry’ they feel.
Yet, having survived the above, the private dinner party is now finally being killed off by the modern curse of the ‘dietary requirement’. For hosts, it’s just no fun catering for whimsical guest dietary fads (vegan/vegetarian/fibremaxxing) as well as an ever-increasingly eclectic range of religious, cultural, or personal cult diets – such as the Paleo, or the Stone Age Diet, which involves eating only ‘unprocessed’ foods like a cave man/woman. Or there’s the ‘Jain’ diet which is strictly 100 per cent lacto-vegetarian based on ahimsa (non-violence), designed to minimize harm to all living beings. Most are ‘lifestyle choices’ and have nothing to do with medical conditions. When these guests say they ‘can’t’ eat this or that, what they usually mean is ‘won’t’.
The knock-on effect is that hostesses now have to buy three times as much food and prep for hours. (Dietary demands have also led to the decline of the simple Table d’hôte menu, meaning ‘host’s table’.) Instead of cooking for ten guests, a hostess might end up cooking for the equivalent of 16, with an extra hour spent making hollandaise sauce for the organic salmon that the pescatarian (vegetarian but also enjoys fish) has requested. ‘Guests have begun to treat a private dinner party like going out to a restaurant,’ says one friend.
The ‘Dietary Requirement’ began as a ‘special meal’ – usually kosher – on flights in the 1950s. It slowly developed into an American corporate food ‘right’. But it is now increasingly creeping into British private dinners, lunches and even kitchen suppers, slowly ruining the entire art of private entertaining and hosting. Nicholas Coleridge put it well when I raised the subject at a lunch party (with no choice): ‘In my day, “dietary” meant leaving what you didn’t like on the side of the plate’.
On the rare occasion that I still receive an ‘At Home’ printed invitation – usually scanned and sent by email – for an old-fashioned private dinner party, the email will invariably ask ‘Any dietaries?’. This is a hostess code for: ‘I really don’t want to know about your plant-based or gluten-free/dairy-free preferences, or shellfish, peanut, soy, sesame seed, egg, latex and peanut allergies but I also don’t want you to sit there with an empty plate, looking victimised and pained, so I will do my best.’
I admit it, my annoyance about this new food entitlement is personal. It has become a scourge for myself and my wife, who run a holiday let business at our Elizabethan house in Shropshire (a.k.a. Money Pit Manor) where we offer ‘fine dining’ for group stays. What we’ve learnt is that much of the food intolerance movement is based on a con.
This dawned on me when we recently had a group of 20 staying. The man arranging the trip was American food critic but thankfully on holiday not critiquing the place. On the first night, at a small dinner, we served filet of beef from our local butcher, with much oohing about the quality of the beef. The second night – with all 20 guests present – we had a few ‘dietaries’. When the American asked for a show of hands for those who required the vegetarian lasagna, one of them was actually the red-blooded beefeater woman from the night before who had piled praise on the butcher.
The same happened soon after with an entirely different group when a holiday guest was adamant that they couldn’t eat our home-made dauphinois potatoes – which I had spent hours dicing and making – as he was ‘dairy-free’. Yet the next day, at tea during a house tour, my wife saw him scoffing scones piled with thick clotted cream and Lady Laura’s strawberry jam. He even asked for seconds.
Many of the self-proclaimed healthy eating acolytes that write to us in advance listing their various food needs are not actually suffering from any serious or real allergies, or food intolerances, such as Celiac disease, which can result in hospitalisation, or even death. As a doctor friend said to me: ‘Those at risk know exactly who they are and carry around an EpiPen. Mostly it’s just a dietary preference.’
The truth, as a 2024 report into food allergies in the Lancet Public Health revealed, is that of the 30 per cent of adults who reported an adverse reaction to foods, only 6 per cent were confirmed to have a true food allergy. Falsely claiming to be ‘food intolerant’ is a cash-cow for some. The Daily Mail recently reported the number of people claiming disability benefits for ‘food intolerances’ has rocketed 500 per cent in five years. According to the Department of Work and Pensions, food intolerance is now up there now with tennis elbow, acne and writer’s cramp as an excuse to be paid not to work.
Back in March, my wife and I went on a family skiing holiday to the Tyrol in Austria and stayed in an old-fashioned family pensione in a small village where we had ‘half-board’ which included dinner. I was delighted to see that not only was the menu only in German but also offered zero choice. Too much choice is part of the problem with the modern age.