The Party is Always in the Kitchen

Nicholas Magand on the unshakable attraction of the kitchen as the social hub of a party: To summarise, the living room was the familiar place to sit and chat with people you already knew: it was a great way to spend time with friends. The kitchen was the crowded space to talk and meet new, weird, interesting people: it was the social network lubricant. Both rooms managed to coexist, and in many ways were codependent. Our house has been in my wife’s family for its entire existence, and was, for a couple of generations, the hub of family gatherings. She said when she was a a kid, everyone gathered in the kitchen. That pattern persisted into our ownership of the house. We even tried a couple of times to encourage people to sit in the living room, because it’s huge and cooking was difficult with everyone gathered in the kitchen. We could never get it to stick. The kitchen is only the cool spot because you’re in it