🟧 A casual midnight omelette party for 47
Making absurd dinner plans is good for you!
Summer is the time for silly parties. You don’t need a reason or an excuse; just send out the email or mass text and go from there. Whatever happens will be fun. Nick Andersen suggests combatting adulthood ennui with an entertainment challenge.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
by Nick Andersen
I knew I was lying when I wrote a random assortment of friends, colleagues and loved ones that ‘RSVPS were not required,’ but I was convinced that if I tried out a casual, open-invite after-hours omelette supper party for 30 and accepted whatever quantity of attendees showed up, I might believe the lie in the end. It turned out to be 47 or more people who gathered in my home one Friday evening into Saturday morning earlier this spring. They believed in the lie, and in my large collection of eggs.
Personally, I like order, shared expectations, and rules, and I like doing things by the book. But I live in New England, where making friends in adulthood is notoriously difficult and where I’ve had great success meeting new people through repeated, consistent and open invites to random parties. I met my husband through a weekly Sunday potluck dinner; I’ve found several jobs and lifelong friends through a monthly audio-maker meetup I now help organize; and for the last five years my husband and I have hosted a weekly, summerlong come-one-come-all cocktail party on our back porch. The casual, ordinary dinner party is also how I try to approach friendship in the rest of my life. There is nothing ordinary, however, about hosting a midnight omelette supper for 30.
I got the idea for this party from a Jemina Kelly column in the Financial Times, which was inspiring in its ordinariness: the party photos didn’t look like a crowd of influencers, just regular people having fun (and eating a lot of eggs). I immediately sent the column to several friends and porch-drinks regulars, asking if recreating a Martha Stewart original sounded like something I might do to kick off our summer. The enthusiasm was immediate.
A colleague at my part-time cheesemongering job mentioned that his boyfriend owned an original copy of Stewart’s debut party planning tome, Entertaining, and thus I obtained instructions for her omelette supper. Her guidance is both maddeningly vague and pointedly specific — music is important to keep your party moving (she suggests classical guitar, rock, or flute concertos); it’s hard to eat hearty rolls late at night so aim small with the bread course; be prompt serving supper but don’t start cooking your made-to-order omelettes until 11 pm. I accepted the challenge.
I invited more than 30 people in order to dull the edges of my panic — I was worried that either too many or not enough people would show up — and baked extra bread, scones and savory madeleines to add padding for the omelettes. I tasked my husband with assembling espresso martinis and creating a playlist within Stewart’s specific three-genre range, both of which he nailed. We corralled a friend into letting us use her Costco membership in order to purchase enough eggs for as many three-egg omelettes as possible; we ended up with somewhere north of 120.
The plan was thus: We would print out exactly 30 slips of paper, ten instances of one of three flavors (Swiss cheese, cream of spinach, cream of leek) each, and ask our guests to bring a flavor slip and exactly three eggs to me at the stovetop any time after 11. (I guess I was LARPing a short-order cook.) In keeping with Stewart’s written suggestions, we also used eggs as party decorations, and in keeping with my faux-casual mien, I divided exactly 90 eggs between two large bowls, leaving our guests the responsibility to forage for their late-night protein. That backfired a bit, since guests started foraging in our fridge for emergency eggs. Nevertheless, I made it to my 30th and final omelette shortly after 12:45 AM. I had imagined, faux-casually, of course, that the final omelette would be made when the final three eggs were plucked from one of the two bowls in my home. This did not happen owing to the refrigerator-scrounging, leading me to scream into my hands at roughly 12:30 AM when I discovered it. But I accomplished my 30 omelette onslaught solo — despite what Martha may have suggested to me on public radio.
The omelette party lasted until 3 AM, when our collective energy waned. No dishware was broken and our cat didn’t escape. Food didn’t run out, and even the pound of herbed butter and wildly sugary chocolate-chip cookies I baked got consumed. A friend told me she would be talking about this party for the rest of her life, so I consider this a success. Maybe the lesson here is: plan an absurd party, just to see what happens. Logic doesn’t need to apply; it’s amusement, after all. Grown-ups need to play around a little on the edges of their lives, too. I cannot necessarily recommend hosting your own omelette party, unless you are a professional. But if anyone reading this is near Cambridge, Mass., for the next seven or so Friday afternoons, look us up. Our porch is open to all, and the cocktails — but not the omelettes — are always made to order.
Nick Andersen is an audio producer and cheesemonger from Cambridge, Mass. If people remember him for anything, he hopes they say he throws a good party.
This sounds like an absolute hoot
I, too, found the photos and description of that Financial Times writer's party incredibly alluring—so impress that you actually did it!!!