Refreshing Ideas

Put your love of food and friends in motion with a roaming dinner party!

What's more fun than a potluck? Less hassle and more active than a sit-down dinner party? More affordable, social, and better for your digestion than a fancy restaurant? It's a roaming dinner, where you and a group of friends plan a mouth-watering multi-course meal, with each dish served at a different guest's house. It's a way to keep the delicious fun moving—literally—with a nice healthy walk between courses! Here are ten tips to keeping your roaming dinner party on track.

1. Keep it local. To prevent your party from becoming a scavenger hunt with guests driving all over town or hunting for parking spots, try to keep your roaming dinner confined to your neighborhood. This way everyone can simply walk from home to home, which is also a great way to work off that last course!
2. No more than four courses. If you take into account how much time you and your guests will spend eating, chatting, and walking from home to home, a meal under four courses will keep your evening under four hours. Any more than that, and you might end up cooking breakfast for your guests! Here's a suggestion for a meal that won't turn into a marathon:
   • Hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, and beverages (Coke, Diet Coke, and DASANI should satisfy most people's thirsts)
   • First course (soup, salad, etc.)
   • The main course (maybe a side dish too)
   • Dessert
3. Try a regular schedule. By throwing a roaming dinner party on a regular basis—every season, for instance—each guest can better fit it into their schedule. Plus, by knowing what to expect and when, each guest should find the dinners easier and easier to plan.
4. Pick a theme. Choosing a theme to tie-together all of the courses is not only fun, but also it puts all cooks on the same menu (as opposed to vichyssoise for the first course, enchiladas for an entrée, and baked Alaska for dessert, for example). You can pick seasonal themes, international themes…you can even go a little crazy and have all of your courses be linked by color, ingredient, a letter of the alphabet, shape, or even a particular era (50s comfort food, anyone?).
5. Invite someone new. A roaming dinner is a great opportunity to expand your circle of friends by inviting someone new to the neighborhood. Nothing brings people together like great food!
6. Be prepared. A roaming dinner wasn't built in a day. Make courses that can be prepared ahead of time and reheated when guests arrive. This way you won't have to duck out of someone else's course (unless they're serving duck, of course) to make your dish. Also, have the table set and put up any decorations before leaving your home for the first course, so that everything is perfect when it's your turn to host.
7. Keep things moving. Set predetermined times to move on to your next course so that diners can pace themselves and no one feels suddenly rushed or put-out (this also keeps things from getting too late). An hour or so should be enough time. Allow a little more time for dessert so than diners can play cards or a board game or simply have more time to say their goodbyes.
8. Be organized. Designate a dinner coordinator to help establish the guest list and headcount beforehand. Next, send out invitations that include the times and addresses to each host's house so if someone is running late they can join up with the rest of the diners. The dinner coordinator and theme for your next roaming dinner could be decided during dessert, to help everyone get a jump on your next great event!
9. Keep servings small. It's easy to think that, when inviting people into your home for a meal, that you need to stuff them. Remember that you are responsible for only one course. This not only prevents you from having tons of leftovers but also leaves guests hungry enough for their next course.
10. Eating for charity. If you and your friends are feeling really ambitious, you can sell tickets to your roaming dinners with all the proceeds going to charity. You may find yourselves cooking for a lot more guests, but everyone will feel both full of food and goodwill afterwards!

Serve a classic crowd pleaser. If you're the last house on the route, try this delicious Coke float recipe for desert: Just spoon two or three scoops of vanilla ice cream into a small bowl or large mug. Add two scoops of peach yogurt, pour in a few ounces of Coca-Cola, and voila! You've got a peachy keen treat all your guests are sure to enjoy.

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