At Dinner Party, guests seem more open to those interactions. They served their function - to seat more guests - but rarely did New Yorkers talk to diners seated mere inches from them. Before the pandemic, communal tables at restaurants in the city were often considered the worst seats in the house. Treating it as a sort of dress rehearsal, Tuesday dinner is priced at $40 instead of $48 as it is during the rest of the week.īut, like its namesake, Dinner Party is about more than the food. “ just flying blind,” she says half laughing. There’s no recipe testing in advance of dinner service on Tuesday night. “If you’re cooking in a culture that doesn’t belong to you, it is important to acknowledge where you’re getting that from,” Jetta notes. For inspiration, Jetta paged through the “ La Vida Verde: Plant-Based Mexican Cooking with Authentic Flavor” by chef Joceyln Ramirez, whom Dinner Party also tagged on Instagram. Leading up to the Ides of March, they imagined what Julius Cesar ate the night before he was assassinated, coming up with spring allium flatbread, whole roasted branzino with tapenade, and semolina shortcake with whipped ricotta and honey-poached dates.Īs the weather started to warm in early spring, the team assembled a menu of mostly plant-based Mexican-influenced dishes, including pan-fried plantains with green chickpeas, halloumi, and honey, and flautas filled with oyster mushroom and soyrizo. The whole team also has a say (if they want it) in the menu, which changes entirely each week. “For people of our generation, some of these things are just givens, which is so cool.”
… I am technically in charge, but we’re all kids,” Jetta says. The restaurant isn’t a co-operative, but she wanted to bring that spirit to the project - fittingly, everyone is tipped out. She’s acted on instinct rather than following a prescribed way of doing things. In some ways, Jetta sees her lack of experience as an advantage. Everyone is 26 or younger and before this project, only two, including, sous chef Ryan Del Franco, had considerable restaurant experience. Perhaps both.” Nearly a year later, she says, “It has absolutely been both.” The team, which started as six women, has largely stayed the same with one moving on (though she’s still in the group chat) and two more individuals joining. … We’re either in for a rude awakening, or the time of our lives. Just before opening, she told Eater: “Dinner Party is a restaurant for and by young people. While timelines and budgets for opening restaurants in the city range immensely, Jetta opened quicker and on a tighter budget than many. “I would say that we did it on about $200,000 total,” Jetta says. In June of last year, Dinner Party opened, selling picnic-ready meals to go, adding seated dinners in August and indoor lunch this spring. Her best friend Loryn Cook designed the space and oversaw a gut renovation in four months. “Still, by New York City standards, it was on a budget.” She hosted a party, asking friends to buy tickets and donate what they could to help get the project off the ground. “I’m fortunate enough to have family members who were able to basically give me a sizable loan to get it started,” Jetta explains. In January 2021, Jetta signed a lease for the space that used to house Pequeña, a beloved neighborhood spot that closed the summer before. With little restaurant experience, she armed herself with a checklist from a city-run resource for small business owners and wrote a business plan. “I think I had an existential epiphany,” she says, realizing what she wanted to do was cook for others. In the early days of the shutdown, Jetta was working in fundraising at the American Museum of Natural History and spending much of her time at home cooking.
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