Dinner invitation: how to defend yourself when your friend can't cook

2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-06-06 02:02

A fortuitous meeting between friends who have not seen each other for a while and unexpected triggers the dinner invitation. A phone call follows the next day to confirm the date, time and place, that is, his home, of friends you haven't seen for a while.

You can always decline the invitation, but you are happy to spend a few hours in good company: the problem is that friends are not really knowledgeable about gastronomy (maybe that's why you haven't seen them for a while). A typical situation in which everyone, sooner or later, found themselves entangled.

There are those who get along in the kitchen and those who don't: once you gulped down a meat pie giving fake compliments, another a soup so ignoble that you hoped it would stay hot for eternity in order not to have to eat it.

Above all, it is the moment of judgment. A damage. A disgrace. An inevitable misfortune. You are called to express yourself continuously, and however much you try to mislead by talking about politics, cinema and finance, even about your illnesses, an opinion must correspond to every degree.

Over time you have come up with one series of sentences to hide the embarrassment and reassure the landlord, even when you would curse yourself for accepting the invitation.

Spaghetti carbonara

When they offer you spaghetti carbonara and you understand that the sauce is ready by the tinkling warning of the microwave, you can always say:

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you I'm allergic to bacon (some friends don't use bacon). I told myself you'd never make anything with bacon, how stupid”.

Rice salad

"What was the rice salad like? Did you like it?"

“Yes, good. I prefer pasta, but it wasn't bad. Really, I've eaten worse”.

Fried fish

In case the fried fish at the first taste turns out to be a kind of chewing gum, you can always get away with it like this:

"Sorry, but the images of the giant prawn I saw on television today came to mind …"

Wine

In front of an embarrassing wine label with indeterminate geographical indications:

No thanks. I no longer drink red after a hangover from Barbra when I was 18”.

The cake

In the presence of a hostess who has prepared a pastry based on puff pastry with her hands, with a taste dangerously similar to a bar of soap:

“Thanks, that's enough for me. You know today during my lunch break I also ate my colleague's chocolate salami, I was sorry he threw it away .

Nocino: the grand finale

“Here is the grand finale: the nocino that I make at home”. The right answer, given that 8 times out of 10 the nocino homemade by your acquaintances is horrible, is only one:

"That's enough, I have to drive and there is always a roadblock under the house. I just can't ".

Vegan cuisine

How to refuse the vegan hostess's zucchini spaghetti with white seitan ragout?

“Thanks, I jump. Once in an all you can eat I was sick. Not that it was the seitan's fault, but I had eaten it and I still have this bad memory. You know, I can't do it”.

Carnivorous cuisine

And if they offer you an attempt at a self-cured but still pink capocollo in a worrying way, this is the answer:

“I'm trying to become a vegetarian, it's very hard, but I have to succeed”.

To deny the evidence

When you taste something that is not for you and assume an expression that is not very dissimulable, it denies the evidence:

“Nice conversation and great food, indeed incredible, you won't believe it but I haven't eaten it for a century. Imagine that I had even forgotten the taste! .

How to make it clear that something has gone wrong

This dinner too, thank the gods, we took it off. If you are connected to your denied friends in the kitchen, or if you understand that the relationship could have a future, apply with the eyedropper the difficult art of making it clear that something has not gone as it should:

“Next time you come to me: I'll make you the same dish but with my grandmother's recipe. That good one, ahem good soul, that is .