One Fine Dine: The saviour of bad dinner party food?

The late AA Gill once wrote: “Let’s face it: dinner parties are social events and the company is the main thing.” He bemoans the food served at dinner parties and doesn’t understand why so often it must be bad. I broadly agree with him. Is it too much to ask to go to a restaurant? The food is much better, there’s less fuss, you can spend more time with your guests, and you’re not all just dressed up, sat around someone’s under-sized dinner table while you eye the host’s cat purring around the kitchen surfaces. When hosting a dinner party, or perhaps even a date night, why shouldn’t the food be excellent?

While going to restaurants hasn’t been an option for much of the last year chefs have adapted by bringing the food to us at home as we desperately clung onto any thread of normality. If we closed our eyes, we could almost pretend that we were in a restaurant, and that the pandemic wasn’t real, almost... Food boxes – professionally cooked food that you simply heat up and serve at home – entered something of a golden age, playing to this idea of bringing restaurant-quality food to you at a much higher standard than a takeaway. But as we ease out of lockdown and with restaurants now open inside and out, what place is there for home delivery food boxes?

Last week, my housemate and I tried a One Fine Dine food box at home. A sturdy cardboard box of packaged food, professionally cooked, was delivered straight to my door with a smile. But this service is more than about food, this is about seeking a “luxury experience”. The box is packaged exactly as you might want from a high-end service; touches of tissue paper, and card menus with hints of gold for each of the guests to see. It felt like an event, not just a meal.

I had opted for the vegetarian options from the May menu: whipped Ashlynn goats’ cheese with a heritage beetroot salad to start; tamarind roasted aubergine with barbecued tender stem broccoli, pak choi and satay sauce, for main; and for dessert an elderflower creme with champagne poached strawberries, and a meringue and oat crunch. My housemate had the chicken terrine to start, Gressingham duck breast for main, and roasted white chocolate cheesecake with salted caramel to finish.

We enjoyed heating and plating the meals together, hopelessly pretending to be professionals, copying the chefs we’ve seen on TV with the little squeeze-bottles of sauce provided; dropping balsamic vinegar in asymmetrical drops around the plate. Don’t get me wrong, it was certainly a bit of a faff – and came with quite a bit of unnecessary waste – not like sitting down in a restaurant, but the question is whether or not the end result was worth it, did I feel like I was eating a restaurant-quality meal or a home cooked meal? The honest answer is it was as close to a restaurant-quality meal at home we could have, short of becoming chefs ourselves...

The complexity of the sauces and the combination of flavours was so obviously beyond any takeaway or home cooked meal, that the question of whether we might as well have cooked at home was moot. My housemate’s duck breast was a particular highlight, the meat was soft and tasty, I expected it to be overcooked and bland due to the reheating, but it was as good as I would expect from a high-quality restaurant. We had to heat it for quite a bit longer than the stated time, but when it was ready it could have come straight out of a professional kitchen. The tamarind aubergine was also a delight, with the variety of tastes all playing off each other making for an exciting, light meal underscores by the bite of the satay sauce.

The elderflower creme was a subtle end to the meal, almost like a palette cleanser and, if I am honest, the cheesecake – which I tried from my housemates’ plate – was the better choice, and highly enjoyable if you have a sweet tooth.

It could be assumed that dine-at-home boxes will fizzle out to nothing as we ease out of lockdown, and for some this will certainly be the case. But for others, like One Fine Dine, food boxes might just be the answer to the question of bad food at a dinner party. Not just the food, but an experience. One day, in the not-so-distant future, staying at home will not feel like an obligation or burden anymore. As life returns to normal, we will eventually look forward to nights in again, just like we did before coronavirus. Dinner parties and date nights will be back on. We will once again feel comfortable having friends around our tiny tables, and we will be happy to have them there – judging us quietly about our cats – so then why settle for bad food when you can have duck breast made by someone who knows exactly how to cook it so it’s soft and tender and not a chunky burnt piece of rubber?

One Fine Dine also offers a “private chef at home” experience alongside their food box services