At experiencehost.com, my goal is always to elevate the experience for my guests. Some people do that with hand-crafted cocktails. Me? I do it by making sure nobody ever sees me cooking.
Because here’s the thing: there are two types of hosts.
- The glamorous unicorns who sauté, season, and serve in real time while their guests ooh and aah like it’s live theater.
- And me—the host who believes the highest form of hospitality is having everything done before you even ring the doorbell.
I want the food cooked, the kitchen clean, and my army of crockpots linked up like the culinary Avengers, keeping everything warm. Crockpots are my secret weapon—far less dramatic than open flames. (Fire and I have an agreement: it doesn’t come near my serving table, and I don’t burn my house down.)
And here’s the truth: though I love to cook and I think I’m actually pretty good at it, when I’m working in the kitchen… it is not pretty. I’m clumsy. I spill. I improvise. It’s less “chef’s kiss” and more “please don’t look directly at the disaster until it’s plated.” If Martha Stewart saw me mid-prep, she’d probably hang her head in shame and revoke my whisk privileges.
Cooking in front of family is even riskier. In some families “feedback” is a sport:
- “When I do it, I do it this way…”
- “Are you sure that’s enough salt?”
- “Hmm, interesting choice.”
My goal is to elevate the guest experience, not my temper.
So I keep it simple: food ready, wine poured, kitchen clean. Because for me, elevating the experience means everyone’s happy, well-fed, and blissfully unaware of the chaos that happened hours earlier.
Image courtesy of Askar Abayev via Pexels.
