THE WINTER TABLE

The Winter Table is a dinner the Court sets in the last week of January, in a borrowed room in New York, for the smallest company of any engagement in the season.

Game and root vegetables, cooked long and brought to the table in what they were cooked in. No speeches. No seating plan. Black tie.

The Form

The winter dinner is the least remarkable thing on the Court’s calendar. Every society that has kept a season has kept one, because January is the month with nothing else in it and the people worth eating with are all indoors.

What distinguishes it is the plainness. Game is not luxurious food. It is what was shot, hung and eaten in the months when nothing grew, and root vegetables are what kept. The table is dressed properly and the food is not, and that inversion is the whole idea.

The Evening

Guests arrive at seven and drink standing up. There is no receiving line.

Dinner is at eight, served from the middle of the table rather than from the side. Dishes are passed. Wine is poured and left.

There is no top table and no placement. Who sits beside you is a matter of where you sat down. The Court arranges it that way deliberately, since a seating plan decides in advance who is worth talking to, and the point of the evening is that nobody has decided.

The table is cleared at eleven and the room stays open.

What Is Asked

Black tie. It is stated in the invitation and it is not negotiable.

The Court begins at eight whether or not everyone is there.

Telephones stay in pockets. A photographer is present for part of the evening, and what is worth keeping is sent afterward.

Nobody is pitched at the table. What follows from an evening is for those concerned to arrange elsewhere.

The Places

Fourteen. It is among the smallest tables the Court sets and the first to fill.

Members are written to in the autumn. The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the evening.

A member may bring a guest by arrangement, and answers for them.