You can tell someone a tin of sardines is worth caring about. They will nod politely and carry on with their life. Or you can sit them at a table on a rooftop at seven in the evening, hand them a menu with their name on a scallop, and put the thing in front of them.
We tried the second one.
The table
Red cloth. Not a tasteful terracotta, not a muted clay. Red. The kind of red that makes everything on top of it look better and everyone around it look like they are having a more interesting evening than they actually are.
On it: blue and white striped platters, because stripes and tomatoes are a complete argument and need no support. A bowl of lemons doing nothing useful whatsoever. Cherry tomatoes still on the vine. A silver dish of ice with tins sitting in it like something far more expensive.
And the place cards, which is where we lost an entire afternoon. Each guest got a scallop shell or a little painted octopus with their name on it: Cristina, Lilly, Maria, Laura, Natalia. It is a small thing. It is also the entire difference between a party and an occasion, and we will die on this hill.
What we fed them
Crostini, mostly, because the crostini is the perfect delivery system and everyone already knows how to eat one.
A round of toasted bread. A slice of tomato, seasoned properly, which most people skip and which changes everything. A spoonful of whipped cream cheese, loose enough to sit rather than sculpt. A sardine fillet laid across the top, straight from the tin, with a little of its oil allowed to run into the cheese. Rocket. A crack of pepper. Done.
Forty of them, made in an assembly line in a kitchen that was too small, with the two of us disagreeing about the ratio of cheese to fish until the first guest arrived and settled it by eating four.
Alongside: cucumber rounds with a whipped sardine and dill mixture, for the people who claim not to like sardines and then eat nine. There is always at least one. Feeding that person is genuinely the most satisfying part of the evening.
The menu, which nobody needed
We printed a drinks menu. Illustrated, on heavy paper, with lemons up the side. For a party of twelve people who were always going to have the vermouth.
It was unnecessary and it was the best decision we made. People picked them up. People read them, properly, the way you read a menu in a restaurant you are excited about. Two of them took one home. A printed menu tells your guests that you thought about tonight before tonight, and that is a nicer thing to say than saying it.
This is the whole thesis, really. Tinned fish has spent decades being treated as the thing you eat standing at the fridge with a fork, alone, slightly ashamed. None of that is the fish's fault. Put it on a striped plate, on a red cloth, on a roof, at golden hour, with your name on a shell, and it turns out to have been dinner party food the entire time.
What we learned
Make more than you think. We made forty crostini for twelve people and ran out, which is embarrassing to admit and useful to know.
Open the good tins. We had been saving a few. We opened them and it was the correct call. A beautiful tin you never open is just an ornament, and we are not an ornament company.
Do the place cards. Yes it takes an afternoon. Yes it is the thing everyone photographs.
And the one that actually mattered: nobody needed converting. Not really. Every single person at that table already liked good food and simply had never been given tinned fish in a context that let them take it seriously. The fish was always good enough. It was the table that was missing.
We are doing it again. Bigger cloth, more crostini, same lemons.
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