Planning the right soiree can be tiresome, with the help being so utterly plebeian and the guests just itching for the opportunity to cut you down behind your back at brunch in the morning. So you have to be at the top of your game.
- French dishes. Why do you think that the words Hoers D'Earves, Canapes, and Haute Cuisine are French? Because they are the masters of culinary delight, obviously. Make sure you book an authentic French chef six months in advance, or alternatively, get a convincing actor to stand around with an accent and a hat, snubbing the guests.
- Seafood is an absolute must, but guard rigorously against food poisoning, etc because nothing ruins a good gathering like vomiting and screaming. AND your guests will never let you live it down. Ensure the seafood isn't in something so common as a cocktail, make sure it's all patently clear what animal it's from and how expensive that animal was.
- Caviar is a little passe, unless it has been imported in wooden crates and wood shavings from some far off region. It's not too difficult to employ some pleb to paint them up for you, if required.
- Cocktails are extremely vulgar and shouldn't by used under any circumstances. Wine should be impeccable and decanted. These vultures know when it's cheap, so make sure it's not.
- Cheese that is in no way shape or form from the common cow. Cow's cheese, particularly in cubes, PARTICULARLY on toothpicks with vulgar little pieces of pineapple and cocktail onions, are so ghastly and lower class that it makes me feel faint just thinking of it. Goat cheese is acceptable, but Yak cheese is all the rage and should be considered.
- Water. Make sure it is expensive, bottled, but decanted. It's like the wine... in fact, it may be more important than the wine.
- Meat. Only exotic meats should be served. Cow, goat, sheep, pig, chicken are all incredibly common and certainly don't do your reputation any favours. I recommend crocodile, buffalo, quail, lion, gazelle, and other game that has had to be killed in the wild. Be sure to let your guests know that you were practically there, overseeing the operation of catching it.
- Asian spices, particularly from war torn regions, make good flavour additives and anecdotes.
- Avoid common vegetables. Particularly root vegetables... so unfashionably Eastern Block! If you must have greenery, ensure that it is exotic; Asian or at least from the continent so you can use it's French name.
- Desert: Exotically flavoured parfait is acceptable. Cake is too lowbrow. Be sure to tell the ladies the parfait is low fat, and compliment them on their extra pounds next week.
