"Omelet" ha scritto nel messaggio
> Goomba wrote:
>
>> Omelet wrote:
>>
>> > <lol> If I am serving some specific dinner guests, I'll happily discuss
>> > > the menu with them (usually via e-mail) prior to their visit, and
>> > cook according to their wishes.
>>
>> At what point in that process are you the hostess rather than just a cook
>> at the home-restaurant they agreed to eat at that night??
>> Do you let them dictate the entire menu, dining hour, drinks and dessert?
>
> Why not? I'm serving THEM, not me!

Om, that's not how entertaining generally works. Hosts generally make what
they want, what they can afford, what interests them and what they are
capable of cooking. Other than life threatening allergies, guests don't
really have a say in menus.
Do you remember the brouhaha over how a "hostess" assigned someone from
here to bring a scaldingly expensive dish and wine to a party? And that no
one here thought she was hosting a party, just gouging some neighbors? Your
"order it up right here" take on it sort of asks for that.
I cook for money. I ask restrictions ahead of time but I make up the menus.
Most of my clients now know enough about Italian cookery to have input, but
when I started people would suggest what sounded like the menu at Olive
Garden or some other chain. Of course any of us can cook that, but why? I
would think the same of your guests. You know a lot more about what you do
very well than they can. You know what's in season, whatìs in the markets,
what you personally can do with those things.
As I read this thread I imagined someone from here getting invited to the
White House and trying to tell Michelle Obama what to serve them and what
they didn't like.