I’m going out on a limb here, but I imagine that most of us have a few weird scenarios that we play over in our heads from time to time but never say aloud to another person. For me, one of those scenarios is that a group of aliens arrive on Earth and I am in charge of coordinating a welcoming feast. It’s not as if everybody else is dead or I’m some celebrity chef or anything like that, I just got put in charge of the welcoming feast for some reason and, naturally, I want to do as good a job as possible.
In my mind, the dinner always takes place in a windowless, hotel conference ballroom replete with wall to wall carpeting in oversized patterns of burgundy and tan, 20 foot ceilings, and a discomforting asymmetry due to the fact that a full-height accordion divider wall is slicing the room in half. This room is one of many, and it’s not unfathomable that at the same time as our dinner is beginning, there will be other people in other ballrooms scrolling through their phones while an eager sales rep demos recent innovations in the field of prosthetics. Or perhaps they are eating salad in the dark while a compliance officer in town from HQ drones over a Powerpoint about the benefits of increasing employee familiarity with GAAP accounting principles.
Reflecting on this now, I can of course imagine about 10,000 better venues to host a dinner for aliens, but we’re going to keep here, in this room that is probably called Rosemont or Dogwood or Loire, replete as it invariably is with high top tables and bar stools, hotel staff sporting plastic name badges pinned to flashy vests, and monotonous ceiling lighting that somehow annihilates even the idea of a shadow.
So without further ado, I present you a dinner for aliens.
I think we gotta start with water.
Like, we don’t really know the aliens deal, and we shouldn’t take much for granted. So when the aliens arrive we will have waiters going around with trays of water and asking the aliens “still or sparkling”, which is really such a great entry point to dining with humans for the first time. There will, of course, be human guests invited to schmooze with the aliens, and let’s go ahead and say that it’s us, people who have read this sentence, who are their hosts. So while everyone is drinking water, and hopefully gravitating towards one of the 30 or so high top tables spread across the room, we each have the important task of breaking the ice, maybe by trying out lines like “yeah, so our bodies are 60% made of this stuff, wild huh?” or “if I go a few days without drinking water I will die”.
Soon but not too soon after the water comes out, the waitstaff will pull oversized black napkins off of each high top to reveal an ample (but by no means indulgent) spread of crackers and grapes. I’m not particularly concerned about what types of crackers they are, and if there are budgetary constraints in putting together this dinner I wouldn’t be opposed to working with whatever cracker company was willing to donate crackers in-kind, perhaps in exchange for the right to set up a six (6) foot collapsable table directly outside the ballroom where they can do some promo for their other products with up to two (2) members of their sales team.
Once the aliens start trying the grapes, we can say things like “hey did you know we make drinks out of this?” and at that moment the waitstaff re-enters the room with trays of Louis Roederer Cristal Brut chilled to 46F, which shall remain the house drink for the rest of the evening. To mitigate any grape choking hazards, it will of course be important that we get the cream of the crop hotel staff working that night, a number of whom are probably CPR certified, or at least were CPR certified when they took the job 18 years ago.
Alongside the champagne, we’ll bring out small bowls of premium mixed nuts, and it should be fun to watch everyone play with that salty/sour/sweet combo. Hopefully by this point we’re talking with the aliens about family, life back home, what they’re doing here (what are they doing here?), how their trip was, why we haven’t visited yet, etc. All this chit chat isn’t just about being good hosts (though of course it is partially about this)—it’s also because we humans need to be gathering intel that we can use to anticipate any dietary issues or cultural misunderstandings that may emerge later in the evening. (If the aliens have a tree nut allergy then we’re fucked from that outset, but for some reason I feel confident that this won’t be a problem).
A really important thing we need to figure out while drinking champagne is whether the aliens want to eat us. And I’m thinking that the best way to handle that is to drop a curtain that’s been hiding a raw bar in one corner of the room and invite the aliens to come try an oyster. At this point I’ll make an announcement to the effect of “Yeah, so this is an animal that lives in the sea and when you eat it you end it’s existence” and if that makes the aliens rageful then we pretend like we were joking—of course we don’t eat sentient beings—and go to plan B which is just a bunch of vegan Indian takeout that we have waiting to go as a backup in the prep kitchen. Ideally the aliens are just pretty chill about eating Earth creatures and they shrug off my announcement in a “sucks to be an oyster” sort of way as they slurp down bivalve upon bivalve. But we’re not out of the woods yet: there is another concern that if we plant the seed that *we* eat less advanced organisms then they may get the idea that they can eat us. So if anyone notices during my announcement that the aliens start making knowing glances towards one another or move to block exits, then please SPEAK UP so we can quickly pivot to plan B and roll out the aloo gobi and bhindi masala before it’s too late.
Assuming things go well up to this point, the raw bar will stay open through dinner because the aliens may find it fun to play around with crab legs, lobster tail, poké, and various nigiri, but for now we’re going to move on.
I think our next stop has to be vegetables. I’ve seen some fancy restaurants serve little gardens, where they “plant” seasonal produce in a bed of pecan dirt or whatever, and I think that this could be really fun for the aliens as it’s an opportunity to chat more broadly about agriculture and learn about what they eat back home. Budget willing, I think we can serve this course in glass Weck jars that the aliens can take home with them as a memento of their time with us.
After veggies, we’re going to do a soup bar in two parts. First, we’ll pass out small bowls of miso soup, to familiarize the aliens with the way we imbibe steaming hot liquid. After that, we’ll instruct the aliens to move through the soup buffet line (which they won’t have seen yet – this is why the ballroom divider wall was up). Portions will be on the smaller side, but it’s important that we get high quality bowls and appropriate utensils for each soup so as to not diminish the slurping experience. I’m not totally set on the menu, but there should be a global medley of options including, but not limited to, tonkatsu ramen, maafe, clam chowder, phở, borscht, bouillabaisse, paprikash, gumbo, menudo, kimchi jjigae, moqueca de camarão, mercimek çorbası, avgolemeno, and khao soi, with all the appropriate fixings, sides, sauces, breads, and oyster crackers. We will also have soup dumplings on offer which can open up the door to a pierogi/shu mai/khinkali side quest for any alien who wants to go that route.
After soup, we arrive at the main course of the evening, and I admit that I was torn between a desire for the aliens to sample a vast array of Earth food and also wanting them to sit for a more intentional and balanced meal. What I’ve landed at is that we do breakout groups, where aliens have the opportunity to choose one of a handful of options. I propose two rounds of breakouts, “saucy red things” followed by “protein and green sauce”.
In “saucy red things” aliens will have the choice between a few different tables including:
Pasta bolognese
Mapo tofu
Awaze tibs
Singaporean chili crab
Massaman curry
Kansas City-style burnt ends
Moussaka
Peking duck
Shakshuka
Coq au vin
Mole
Hamburger and ketchup
And following that “protein and green sauce” will include:
Goat leg, collard greens, and ugali
Steak, chimichurri, and roasted potatoes
Pork green chili enchiladas
Piri-piri chicken, macho peas and plantains
Shredded beef arepas with avocado sauce
Chervil-stuffed trout and sirnica
Falafel, tabouli and pita
Saag paneer and rice
Carne asada, tomatillo salsa, and corn tortillas
Each of the tables will come with a Polaroid camera as well as some culturally appropriate side dishes served family-style. For instance, the bolognese aliens will also get to eat castelvetrano olives and wedges of fontinella while the saag paneer aliens will be up to their ears (or ear equivalents) in raita and naan.
After two rounds of dinner, everyone will move back to the first half of the room to do a quick round of lightning talks where aliens can share their experience (and photos) with the full group. It’s going to be really important for us humans to move things along so that the aliens don’t bore the shit out of one another with extended monologues recounting every aspect of their meal. To help this along, we should introduce during dinner some straightforward pedagogical framework to encourage concise reflections (“I see, I think, I wonder” comes to mind). We can also have a few of the world’s iconic rice dishes available (I’m thinking Hyderabadi biryani, Kabuli pulao, paella Valenciana, risotto alla Milanese and bibimbap), on the side in case anybody wants a few more savory bites before dessert.
Everyone will be getting full at this point, so we’re going to move on to some more unstructured time. What you don’t know is that during the breakout room report backs the hotel staff were busy transforming the dining side of the room into a chill zone, reminiscent of the middle school sleepover of your dreams. We’ll turn the lights down a bit, and stock the room with lava lamps, bean bag chairs, a karaoke station, popcorn machine, books about Earth, and maybe a few more interactive activities like a postcard writing station or face painting. We will also have the à la carte dessert bar and I know it’s uncouth but we need to have a chocolate fondue fountain, replete with a wide array of fruits and cakes and biscuits, plus pastéis de nata and panna cotta on the side, since that creamy, pudding-like texture is something that we really haven’t introduced the aliens to up to this point.
At this point the formal activities will end, but for aliens who want to hang out a little more we will screen some food-related films and bring in a late night Neapolitan pizza truck. (We could also screen films like E.T. but that seems a little more risky). Those who make it all the way to the morning will be rewarded with coffee, croissants and an omelet station, as well as takeaway bento boxes filled with hummus, pita, and pickles, which to my mind is the perfect meal to eat while contemplating one’s time on Earth.
Thanks for reading,
— Grif