Strategies for solving dinner party dietary dilemmas

• Take the Venn diagram approach to dinner parties

These days, it's common to host a dinner party where you find that one person's a vegan, a second eats gluten-free, the third is allergic to tree nuts, and a fourth will not eat shellfish or berries. After you add up all the religious and moral prohibitions, the allergies, the sensitivities, and the preferences, what remains to serve your guests is ... a nice big helping of air. HEPA-filtered, low-humidity air.

There are three basic strategies you can employ here:

Capitulation

Capitulation is for those who are grimly determined to find a menu that will enable you to serve all of your guests the same thing. You ruthlessly chuck out any dish that contains one of the offending ingredients. You find yourself perusing websites of obscure cuisines in the hope that the Afghan Kyrgyz nomads may have a solution to your problem. (They don't.) Then you set aside your weekend to procure ingredients and cook things you have never made before.

Divide and Conquer

Divide and Conquer begins with acceptance. You accept that not everyone will be able to eat everything you cook. For example, we often dine with couples who have one vegetarian and one meat eater. So I make steak and serve mushroom vol-au-vents on the side, doubling up the vol-au-vents for the vegetarian. Or grilled chicken with a side of some vegetarian pasta like pesto or caprese. You think of a meal like a Venn diagram: Not every item has to go on every plate, but every plate must have some items and every item must go on some plates.

Armistice

Armistice puts the onus on the selective eater. You tell the person that you'll be making a salad and would love to have them bring a dish they can eat. When I was a vegan, I always volunteered to bring my own main dish and supplementary dessert, because vegans who expect non-vegans to suddenly learn to cook for them are history's greatest monsters. People with seriously restricted diets should not be offended if you say, "I'm afraid I don't have any good recipes that fit your dietary requirements; would you mind bringing something you like for the table?" Trust me, they're used to it.

The Washington Post