Ours was a cookbook club potluck, but when you are the host you can pick any theme. Themes encourage creativity and make it easy to come up with inspired details. (Think: ugly-sweater parties, cookie swaps, a holiday comedy roast, Christmas carol-oke, and latke-eating contests.) It can help tie all the elements of a party together, such as the decor, menu, music, and favors.

Also, a well-executed theme means your friends will be definitely talking about your party for years to come. And especially when gathering guests who don’t always know each other, a theme can be a fantastic conversation starter.

Caterer: Linwoods Catering
Floral Design: Simply Beautiful Flowers
All tabletop items a mix of the homeowners’, along with Table Toppers, Wishbone Reserve, and The Turnover Shop.

• Chesapeake Bay Cooking by John Shields
• Bread Baking for Beginners by Bonnie Ohara
• Le Sud by Rebekah Peppler
• What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers
• Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden
• Southern Grit by Kelsey Barnard Clark
• Desi Bakes by Hetal Vasavada
• Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow
• What Goes With What by Julia Turshen
• The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten

BUFFET: Roasted chicken with fresh herbs; sliced roast filet of beef; baked dinner rolls; fall arugula salad with peaches, nectarines, candied walnuts, goat cheese, and a citrus vinaigrette; baked French toast topped with fresh berries; artisanal deviled eggs; roasted Brussels sprouts and butternut squash; sun-dried tomato, leek, and goat cheese quiche; and a butternut squash and apple soup. “With Monsters” painting by Katie Pumphrey.

BLOODY MARY BAR: Olives, shrimp, lemons, oysters, celery, tomatoes, peppers, and bacon and brown sugar breadsticks.

DESSERTS: Apple cider doughnuts, blueberry crumble and morning glory muffins, chocolate-dipped macarons, assorted shortbread cookies, sculpted pear mousse, and spiced mixed nuts. Handmade ceramic speckled mugs and cake stands by Kate Rowe Creations.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
By Nelle Somerville

Don’t be afraid to use the family silver and integrate family heirloom pieces into modern tablescapes. In fact, the more you use it, the better it stays. Here are some ideas:

• Baby silver cups can be used for florals and are a fantastic conversation starter. This smaller size is a great way to keep your flowers lower to the table, so guests can easily see each other across the table.

• Mix and match your silver napkin rings. These are also great items to collect. Or alternate with a velvet ribbon if you don’t have enough for a large crowd or set every other setting with a bamboo ring to make it more modern.

• Rinse your silver after the big meal and clean more thoroughly later. I put all of our silver in the dishwasher and have lived to tell the tale.

• Keep it polished, once or twice a year with a strong microfiber cloth and Hagerty silversmith polish—I do it to zen out.

THE BEAUTY OF A SHARED MEAL
By Amy Langrehr

Whether it’s with friends or family, big or small, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday because it’s simply about coming together to enjoy good food with people you love. No gifts, no pressure.

When we were kids, our family would gather at our house in Kingsville with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. We had it there because my dad had multiple sclerosis and getting out and about was not easy. The youngest kids’ main task was to set the table while the big kids watched football or hung out in the backyard.

Aunt Joan’s onion dip (Lipton onion soup mix packet served with Utz potato chips) was always my favorite pre-dinner snack and Aunt Barbara’s coconut cake was the absolute best dessert. The thing I remember most, though, was how everything for the meal came together at the exact right time—it was like magic.

For me, the perfect Thanksgiving plate is dark meat, mashed potatoes with my mom’s homemade gravy, stuffing (Stove Top, a nod to my childhood), green beans, and sauerkraut. To this day, I spoon a little dollop of sauerkraut on the edge of my plate every year as a reminder of my dad.

As much as I treasure those early years, I really like how low-key my Thanksgiving celebrations are now. I am not a huge holiday person, but Thanksgiving with my mom is the best. At 90 years young, she still makes the best crudités plate filled with things like pimento-stuffed olives, radishes with salt, and celery with cream cheese. Sometimes it’s just the two of us and we’ll roast a small bird or maybe just a breast and a couple of thighs that I usually order from Eddie’s to make it easy.

Food memories mean a lot to me. They connect us with our people, especially once they are gone. I love that I can still feel like my dad is there with us with that tiny bit of sauerkraut on my plate. Food memories also take us back to a time or place. Things like picking steamed crabs over newspaper on a picnic table and having a cream cheese and olive sandwich on white bread remind me of my childhood home and the memories my family created there. A super-special treat of a standing rib roast at Christmas, chocolate cream pie on Mother’s Day; those are things that will always remind me of my mom.

One thing I have learned over the years is that the best thing about food isn’t the size of the crowd or how fancy a meal is, it’s about the people we share it with.

A SWEET SOUVENIR: Gather all of the recipes ahead of time and collect them into a book for the perfect favor.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that you can take it with you.

When you just don’t feel comfortable eating inside a restaurant, getting food to go is no longer a matter of last resort. While plenty of joints have long run a brisk carryout and delivery business, other restaurants have gotten into the game as a way of broadening their business models.

When Le Comptoir du Vin pivoted to becoming a European-style pantry featuring grab-and-go items, they did it as a matter of survival. “When we saw the pandemic wasn’t going away, we restructured,” says Rosemary Liss, who co-owns the Station North restaurant with her partner Will Mester. “That has carried us through this whole time.”

Now, as the restaurant re-opens for regular dinner service, the marketplace is still open for business. “This is here to stay,” says Liss.

Carrying-out is the new dining-in. Here are the “It” items from other area spots:

Dylan’s Oyster Cellar

It’s an “R” month (not that it really matters anymore, thanks to oyster farming), which means it’s the peak time to slurp oysters to-go. From Duxbury to Wellfleets, this Hampden haunt serves some of the best bivalves in Baltimore.

Limoncello

The “Gnocchi Al Telefono” bathed in tomato ragù and topped with smoked mozzarella is as good to-go as when you eat in at this Locust Point restaurant.

Linwoods

This Owings Mills institution has consistently provided some of the best to-go fine-dining fare since the start of the pandemic. The broiled crab cake with a side of slaw is a menu highlight.

Tapas Teatro

Don’t make us pick just one! Well, that’s the whole point at this Station North staple. Settle on a few classics, like spicy chicken and cheese croquettes, grilled octopus in Romesco sauce, salmon slicked with molasses, then follow up with flan.

As they drop carryout into cars, Linwood and Ellen Dame can be seen waving from the curb of their Owings Mills fine-dining restaurant. But behind the scenes, they have been busy making preparations to reopen Linwoods once Governor Hogan gives the green light on indoor dining. From turning their popular grill line into a carryout area to using a new health screening app, there are endless details to work through as they get ready to welcome patrons back to their dining room. “We feel like we are starting a new business,” says Linwood. “Everything we did on March 16th doesn’t mean anything anymore, everything is new.”

You waited a little while to open up for curbside carryout. What factored into your decision?
Linwood Dame: When we closed on March 16th, things were in disarray as to what was going on and I really wanted to get more information—for my employees, for my own family—about what we should do and how we should do it. By doing that, we’d do our part by closing up and everyone would just go home. We met the last payroll we had and then furloughed a good amount of people and kept some people on payroll, then waited to see what was going on.

So how is carryout going given that you’re a fine-dining restaurant?
LD: Curbside has been pretty good. We’ve had a great turnout. We were doing it five nights a week and are going to seven nights a week. Overall, the turnout has been pretty good. We are just dropping food in people’s trunks and we are also out there greeting cars—I’ve seen some nice cars go by, by the way. And the conversations I’ve had have been pretty fascinating. People can’t wait to talk to someone—everyone wants to engage in conversation, which is great.

“You really need to think about how you’re going to pack the food. We tested everything. We would make it, put it in the package, and let it sit for a half hour to an hour and figure out what worked and what didn’t work.” —Linwood Dame

I’ve had your carryout myself. In addition to the food being delicious, I noticed how well everything was packaged.
LD: You really need to think about how you’re going to pack the food. We tested everything. We would make it, put it in the package, and let it sit for a half hour to an hour and figure out what worked and what didn’t work, so it took some work to get there. We have things on our menu like octopus and fried Brussels sprouts that people love. We are going to start working on it and see if we can offer those items as carryout.

What hasn’t lent itself to carryout?
Ellen Dame: We decided not to do French fries. We’ve gotten a lot of calls for them, but they just turn into mush.

LD: The fried chicken has worked out well. I’m like a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I love fried chicken, but my god it’s a lot of fried chicken.

I’ve also noticed that you’ve included some nice touches like a bow on the bag and a note from the two of you.
LD: We do appreciate our customers. We want them to know we care, and we want to give them some information about what we are doing in our space—they’ll get more as time goes on. Our customers need to reach a comfort level with us and a trust level to be comfortable—I think that’s really key.

ED: We take pride in our food. We thought the packaging should be reflective of the fact that you’re not just going to the neighborhood pizza parlor and picking up a bowl of spaghetti. We wanted it to feel a little bit more special.

LD: We’ve had people pull up and have tailgate parties in the parking lot.

ED: There was one time where one couple lives in Carroll County and the other couple lives in Harford County and they meet at the restaurant for dinner because it’s halfway for each of them. They met on a Friday night and brought their fold-up chairs and table, they social distanced and they sat in the parking lot.

LD: We had someone in a Mercedes motor home who pulled up to the parking lot, set up a little tent, put the table and the candles out, and ordered wine and dinner.

“People want to see other people. Ninety-nine percent of the people keep their window open to have a conversation and that gives me hope that there is a future for the dining out business. There have been times when I felt really hopeless.” —Ellen Dame

So how is revenue?
LD: Business is down 70 percent—that includes catering.

What do you see as the immediate future of restaurants?
LD: Twenty-five percent to 50 percent capacity isn’t going to work. Some places, if they do a lot of carryout and have low overhead maybe, but that will work for very few restaurants. Places like ours, or Tagliata or Charleston, can’t operate at 50 percent. If you do, you’re going to operate at a loss no matter what happens. The restaurant business is built on volume. You have to have people in seats in order to make it work. For us, I have a lot of space—two big dining rooms where I can fit a fair amount of people at 50 percent and I can spread people out with another 40 seats outside. But what about the restaurant downtown that can only seat 20 people?

ED: We’ve spent a lot of time reimagining what the restaurant business is going to be and how this is going to effect it, both short term and long term. It’s difficult because people are nervous, and I don’t blame them.

LD: We have done a tremendous amount of work within the space. I had countertops replaced and the hood systems completely redone. We’ve power washed the entire restaurant, sanitized everything, and then we are putting UVC lights in the HVAC that kills viruses. They are the same ones they use in hospitals. We’ve already done all our seating spread out six feet apart, we put plexiglass over our hostess stand, and we have sanitizer stations everywhere. Now, we have to get into the protocol of how we take an order, how do we read the menu, what does the server do when they take the credit card…There’s also an app we are going to use called Modjoul—it’s a health screening solution. All of our employees will have this app on their phones and every day. It’s a health check—instead of them coming to the restaurant, it’s done even before they arrive.

ED: It’s what we are doing by hand now—it’s pretty much what the healthcare facilities are doing.

Do you think we will continue to take these kinds of measure once there is a vaccine?
ED: The world is in for a readjustment. Our customers are concerned about their health—these things are going to matter. Woody and I have been standing on the curb every night with a mask and gloves six feet away from the car windows saying, ‘Hi’ to people. And all that first week, it felt really good because people cared, people were happy to see us and to see that we were open. We were also sensing a desire from people just craving contact. People want to see other people. Ninety-nine percent of the people keep their window open to have a conversation and that gives me hope that there is a future for the dining out business. There have been times when I felt really hopeless. In some form the business will come back and go forward. Things will change and a lot of trends out there now won’t survive this. The restaurants that survive are going to have to have a different format.

“Places like ours, or Tagliata or Charleston, can’t operate at 50 percent. If you do, you’re going to operate at a loss no matter what happens. The restaurant business is built on volume. You have to have people in seats in order to make it work.” —Linwood Dame

What will the dining room look like when you reopen?
LD: In the beginning, we are going to put an envelope on the tables, and you can put your mask in there while you’re having dinner. There won’t be salt and pepper on the table and you won’t get lemons and limes. You’ll get a straw that’s still covered in paper. Those are the details that we are still working on. There are thousands of these little details that we have to practice. We will learn as we go along and find things that we haven’t thought of and we will get better and better at it.

Have you been surprised by how fragile the industry is?
ED: For someone like Danny Meyer, who has been incredibly successful and smart in this business, to come out in the first two weeks and say, ‘I give up, there’s no way I can make it except for my takeout burger business,’ is pretty shocking.

LD: But what he said makes a lot of sense. He said, ‘Without a vaccine, the restaurant business is not going to make it on 50 percent seating’—everyone is saying that across the country. Restaurateurs are notorious for saying everything is great when everything is a mess—‘Oh, we had the busiest night of our lives’—yeah, that was three years ago. Now, there’s been a refreshing modesty.