Anne de Montarlot - Host with Confidence: French Secrets for Successful Dinner Parties

Lets face itin the U.S. todayentertaining at home is either all or nothing. Either we go all out or we avoid the hassle altogether.

Call us crazy, but we are almost hyperventilating from our excitement to tell you that it is not a hassle, or a stressful undertaking, to cook and entertain at home for your immediate family or for invited guests! We are also here to tell you that you absolutely should start entertaining at home more often, and not limit yourself to Christmas, the odd birthday, Thanksgiving, a BBQ or a potluck.

Do you remember going to someones house for a dinner party, and thinking about it a whole year later? Well tell you what you wont remember. You wont remember the food. You wont remember the drinks. You wont remember the decor. You will remember the ambiance and how you felt, with its intangible characteristics. It is just like a good Kennedy, Obama or Churchill speech. You dont really remember the words, but you remember what it made you feel like. It is the same thing with a good dinner party. You want your guests (and yourself) to remember how much fun you had, how warm and humorous the room was, and how you nearly fell off your chair laughing at your friend Larrys jokes on how he shared a two hour car ride with his mother-in-law.

And thats the trickTHE AMBIANCE.

What is an ambiance? An ambiance is the atmosphere (the five senses, the company, and the connection) and mood that you co-create and share with others over a meal. It is special. An ambiance is to a dinner party what water is to a fish. It is an experience you go away with and remember.

Ambiance is what this book is all about. It is a guide on how to create an ambiance on a practical and psychological level, and how to relax while doing so. This is not a cookbook, or an etiquette book, or a French culture book, or a floral arrangement book, or a book on how to decorate. It is all of these elements put together to create that special experience. So by all means, keep your cookbooks and use them in tandem with this one.

When FrancoiseAnne and Bahias mothermoved from Paris, France and first stepped foot in the U.S. in the early 1980s, she was immersed into an American environment devoid of the gourmet shops or upscale supermarkets that are so widespread today. Her career took away much of her free time and she was frequently travelling back and forth between Paris and New York (and smuggling in plenty of cheese, pt, foie gras and saucisson sec with her).

Francoise didnt have much time to cook at home, let alone entertain, yet she always did! She regularly invited her new American friends to the house, all of whom had a great time, and who still remember these dinner parties thirty years later. By the same token, Francoise did not have any special secret recipes or cookbooks, nor was she a particularly talented cook, but she had three tricks up her sleeves: