Decadent%20Dinner%20and%20a%20Movie

For many of us, living spaces double as workspaces and occasionally triple as entertaining spaces. Even in the middle of a busy workweek (or a lazy Sunday afternoon), it’s easy to gather up the laptop and paperwork, make a few basic preparations, and be ready for guests to arrive and cocktails to be served.

Set up a beautiful bar in the corner of the room with a bottle each of red and white wine along with chilled bottles of water (flat and sparkling). Make sure everything’s in place before starting the movie so nobody misses a frame. Encourage your friends to help themselves from the bar, which is right near the television and in full view of the screen.

Start with arranging fabulous place settings on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The color theme for this sleek, urbane, sophisticated version of the proverbial TV dinner was black-on-black. A black rattan runner ran the length of the table, accented with black plates, black napkins, black flatware, and a black candle in front of each setting. Each place also featured its own TV tray so our guests could easily eat at their seats while enjoying the show.

The meal itself was the embodiment of simplicity. It’s the ideal “bachelor dinner,” and you don’t have to be an accomplished chef to pull it off. It’s also yet another illustration of the principle that if you choose the finest, freshest ingredients, and prepare them simply without fuss, you’re virtually guaranteed success.

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For the main course, succulent steaks and two vegetable side dishes were lined up side by side and served on the same large tray. Easily transported from the kitchen, both the appetizer course and the dessert were presented in glasses—the crab cocktail in a pedestal coupe, and the berries and sorbet in a rocks glass. This presentation also makes it easy to eat in front of the television, when you don’t want to have to deal with a bowl. You can hold the glass in your hand, bring it up to your mouth very easily without feeling ill-mannered, and still concentrate on the movie.

This divine menu—a cold seafood salad appetizer preceding a good old-fashioned steak—is an American classic. It’s the kind of meal you would have ordered in the forties, fifties, or sixties at the fabled “21” Club in New York, or Chasen’s in L.A., making it particularly appropriate movie fare. But to cater to modern, healthier tastes, potatoes and other heavy starches were replaced with two healthy vegetables, asparagus and tomatoes. Plus, if the food is too heavy, you’ll fall asleep halfway through the movie—and we don’t want that!

For dessert, the berries and sorbet were served in oval rocks glasses on square black plates. And since there’s always room for popcorn, after the dinner was cleared away, it was time for a hot, fresh bowl to accompany the rest of our James Bond movie.

Menu

Crab Cocktail Salad
Pan-Seared Aged New York Steak
Roasted Asparagus
Roasted Tomatoes
Mixed Berry Salad with Scotch and Sorbet
Orange Tuiles

Tips

Asparagus 411
Dressing Up Sorbets

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