Everyone wants to be Martha Stewart
Yes, even me.
I remember Meredith Hayden from her private chef days in Hamptons. And I say that as a entranced viewer. I do not know Wishbone Kitchen personally. But I do know of her: her and the multiple cans of diet coke used to withstand the treacherously long shifts she documented online during the summers. Hayden could be seen serving lobster cobb salads, preparing peach caramel sauce and oats, grilling harvested vegetables from a nearby garden, and showcasing how to use in-season heirloom tomatoes for her now-famous tomato galette recipe. Then she catapulted: attending the Dior show during NY Fashion Week; a cookbook publishing deal slated for 2025; cooking videos with guest appearances from Nick Jonas to Nick Kroll; an apartment in the city with a home in the Hamptons. Hayden went from being on her feet for 12 hours preparing food in someone else’s Hampton house to having her very own. All of this in practically a year’s time.
In that same year, while watching it all unfold in the steady but accelerated incline of her chefluencer1 stardom, I realized that I wanted her life sooooooooo bad. Like, insanely bad. Almost Helen-Sharp-levels of, That should be my life! sentiments. Which is kind of the loser’s way of saying that they want to do what the successful, aspirational person has done but without actually having to do it. And Meredith Hayden’s Wishbone Kitchen empire was kind of the dream. In the few months that Hayden has been publishing long-form content on her YouTube, her series Dinner with Friends, evoked the most powerful title a chefluencer like her could possess:
@wishbonekitchen is our generation’s Ina, iykyk
(posted by @rachelinder on TikTok)
I didn’t necessarily grow up with Ina Garten (See: “If you can’t summon the flames directly for hell, store-bought is fine,” screencaps that make the rounds annually if you’re unfamiliar) but I’ve always understood that the celebrity chef/TV personality realm has always peppered in a new maven of the home chef throughout the decades. But personalities like Garten have evolved into their own genre of celebrity chef unlike the cutthroat of the professional kitchen setting (think Hell’s Kitchen) or the simplicity of the home cook instructors (Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals). Ina Garten is one of those chefs that embodied not only the culinary experience of high-profile chefs, but also the art of hosting. Garten’s decades-long Barefoot Contessa television series showcased a variety of complex cuisines while also divulging tips on decorating and entertaining, what to serve when arranging dinner parties, how to throw together a nasty-hot tablescape for the holidays.
These chefs include lifestyle in conjunction to cooking. They don’t just cook good food. They also know how to throw a party. How to make a beautiful home and also be multi-faceted. It’s something that has dubbed Hayden as a modern Martha Stewart, herself. Her Dinners with Friends videos play like cooking show specials; We watch her prep homemade poppyseed madeleines and maple cinnamon buns from scratch for a christmas coffee shop at home. We watch her unmold the most insane turkey-shaped butter in her friendsgiving in the hamptons video. Yes, a turkey-shaped block of butter. Butter that has been molded into the shape of a miniature turkey. Feathers and all. (She makes two for the occasion.)
Which is exactly the kind of thing that makes hosting so fun. The table spreads, the decorating, the coordination (an incredibly stressful endeavor for someone who just got a dining table three weeks ago), and I’m suddenly caught in the throws of the world of entertaining. I watch Dinner with Friends as they come out. I’ve become a big fan of Isabelle Heikens, who I discovered from her Dinner at Isabelle’s series, in which, Heikens plans a monthly themed dinner party for her friends, fishing out vintage decor inspired by Pinterest finds and curating several courses based on the occasion for each repast. Her Halloween-themed party this past year, Soirée de Sorcières, a gathering of the witches, included: bone marrow appetizer, flaming cherries jubilee dessert, a potion-themed cocktail bar, dressy witch-ensembles, floating candle ornaments, little cauldron drink ware, charred octopus legs with chimichurri served in a chalice for the main. And what would otherwise be just an excessive accumulation of holiday homeware, Heiken’s parties feel intentional. The turnout is always plentiful. The gatherings are always beautiful. Hosting almost always looks worth all the extra stress.
One thing I love too about this genre of hostess videos is that it’s not the usual step-by-step cooking course or thinly-veiled advertisement we’re so used to seeing now from online media personalities. In fact, they’re a pretty pure form of content creation amidst the sponsored videos, like Heiken’s dinner party videos, for example, foregoing the obvious product placement snippets for some affiliate link or TikTok Shop item. Her dinner party series is a masterclass at how well-curated Heiken can be when it comes to hosting and entertaining. Like her Halloween soirée, Heiken includes a potion-themed bar where she teaches her friends how to make their own “fool-proof” signature cocktails, the guests taking turns rattling the shaker, picking out gin and spirits from the decanters, tasting between appetizers and courses. There’s no Grey Goose sponsorship. There’s no mention if her wine glasses are Anthropologie or TJ Maxx’s version of an Anthropologie dupe. It’s all an experience: the combined excitement of guests on arrival; their intimate conversations reminiscent of restaurant catch-ups; the leisure to exist plentifully in the comfort of someone’s home; their happily exhausted goodbyes at the night’s end. Dinner parties sustain friendships, and the content is almost always a reflection of that.
“I think it could be a great way to really appreciate and cherish and show love to the people that are already in my life and that I spend a lot of my time with.” Content creator, Maddie Dragsbaek started hosting dinner parties as a goal of hers for the new year, back in 2023. The goal was to continue to foster the platonic relationships in her lives amidst constant emphasis on the romantic ones, a tradition she continues to keep alive periodically throughout the year. “And also to rekindle old friendships–make new friendships and just invite people over to my home that I’ve spent so much decorating.” Throughout her vlogs, Dragsbaek briefs her viewers on what she plans for each hosting evening: she handmakes name cards for each guest, picks out their gifts, fixes the table with floral arrangements befitting the theme. And these aren’t necessarily choices she makes for the sake of content relatability. Dragsbaek, as a person, has always contemplated the importance of community and remarks on these parties in passing, instead, speaking to the camera with how her engagement with friends, family, etc. makes her feel.
The art of the dinner party has become a newfound fascination for millennial and Gen Z. Every photo I’ve seen posted online of someone’s dinner party aftermath, I’ve been enamored. Every little round dining table I’ve seen clustered with chairs, topped with plates littered with crumbles of brie cheese and figs, wine glasses half-full and a chilled wine-bottle half-empty, I’ve thought about how serene the night must have been, this dinner I’ve had no participation in, shared with no one that I know in particular. The art of hosting encourages you to reach out. Besides the obvious consumerism inflicted by chefluencers and me needing to live my Meredith Hayden lifestyle, really, is making the time to invite the people in my life over to sit and eat.
This past holiday season, I decided to spearhead the Thanksgiving menu while my mother’s access to a grandiose kitchen allowed it. The menu this year was a lobster-centered spread since we’re not a Turkey family. We never have been. But tradition called for my mother’s roast chicken, and I brought back lobster Mac and cheese into this year’s line-up of dishes while also introducing a lobster bisque appetizer. (We introduced appetizers as a way to fend off hangry family members.) We prepped and baked desserts in the morning. We chopped and julienned everything that needed to be prepared when the oven eventually reached back to back broiling and baking in the afternoon. Everything was served exactly at 5:30 P.M. as promised.
I was actually very proud of the how everything turned out. People say you shouldn’t test out new recipes on Thanksgiving but nearly every item on the menu was something that I hadn’t made or really worked with before. While we took turns giving grace, I mostly thanked my Mom for having always kept these dinners afloat. I admitted I never really knew how much went into what she cooked or what she made. When I was a kid, all I ever saw was the plate and the fork and the knife and not so much the billows of steam she caught from the stove or the hot oil that bit at her from the pots. I underestimated how much it took to gather five people amidst their busy lives to one place. Which explains why it’s taken me so long to host my own dinner: it’s a love that includes a lot of labor.
We all want to be the Martha Stewarts and Ina Gartens of our time. How could we not? It’s one of the few platforms where women who cook, knit, garden and entertain can do so without the expectation of domesticity. Amidst the rise of tradwives2 and the matrimonial implications of being a home cook, the latest generation of hostesses emphasize that the only expectations are the ones proposed by themselves; Heiken evoked a literal witch’s gathering in her home—the only thing she’s expected to do as an influencer is outdo her last party by a little bit more. In fact, she’s already posted about her plans for a kitschy, crafted December theme, stringing rainbows of paper chains and paper pendants in her living room and dining room, teasing that her next video will show how the whole party came together. And I eat it up every time. And I’ll keep watching in preparation of hosting my own.
After all, the next most beautiful thing about community is that you can be a witness to it.
much love,
val
Influencers that make cooking videos for social media, often varying from home cooks or personnel from the food industry; Mina Le touches more on this genre of influencer in her video essay on the cultural zeitgeist surrounding food.
A tradwife is a woman who believes in and practices traditional gender roles and marriages, often extolling values that propose them as ideal women, particularly online.