Those Parties

Entertaining has become costly owing to the expensive menus from top end caterers. Only a mere percentage in the city have the dosh in bulk and are yet able to entertain very lavishly and in style. The beverages served are of high quality, as was in the past, and all seems well among this handful of people. 

Then comes the lot who yet yearn to entertain grandly in their homes.  Even though they bring out the family silver and monogrammed crockery, they cannot swing it because what they dish out is a crappy meal from a caterer they have managed to cajole into catering a low cost but nice to look at meal.  Caterers are finding it difficult to come up with menus to match the client’s budget. 

Hence, this lot are always on the look out for an even cheaper caterer whose catered meal is beyond disgusting. Nevertheless, the hostess is convinced that she managed to get away by serving the less than mediocre meal by camouflaging it with the fancy table cloth and other finery. The guests play around with the food and, in the usual fashion, compliment the hostess on the enjoyable evening they had with such delicious food.  Thus, the host is persuaded that she has gotten away once again.  Sadly, the guests are hardly out of the door when their phones are abuzz tearing the host apart.    

The other trick is when some find a restaurant where they could hold a huge bash with cocktails, dinner and dancing. The host hires an event coordinator, who is as foxy as they are, and gives the impression that the party will be filled with the crème de la crème of Colombo society and that the restaurant’s business will boom since the hundred and twenty guests invited will follow suit after their bash. 

At times, the restaurateur is excited thinking of his improved bottom line and accommodates many of the event planner’s suggestions. The host, in the meantime, has paid for one hundred and twenty people and happily invited an extra seventy or more.  Picture the chaos when the guests turn up to find no seating and no drinks and food. 
 The kitchen staff have to pull out all stops, rummage through the kitchen and produce more food, which will not be paid for.  Inevitably, such functions are covered by a society magazine or two and the host is delig hted, while the restaurant owner is beating his head against a wall swearing to himself never to be entrapped again.  Still, there are some who are reeled in by this conniving lot.

At one such occasion recently, some of the guests cottoned on to what was happening, enjoyed the ensuing fiasco for awhile and then slipped out to enjoy dinner at a restaurant of their choice elsewhere.