Love Bite: Girl Dinner, Picky Bits, and the Fabulous Frivolity of Party Food

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Can I be vulnerable with you for a second? Can I live my truth? I’ll just come out and say it: I’m not really that bothered about Christmas dinner. Roast potatoes are good, of course, and it’s nice to eat such an elaborate meal knowing that everyone else is doing the same, but when it comes to actually eating the thing, there’s something about the whole affair that always seems a bit bland and underwhelming to me. 

But that’s not to say I turn my nose up at Christmas food entirely. In fact, quite the opposite: I think there’s no better time of year for eating. I love the morsels: slathering toasted slices of panettone with salty butter, layering up a bagel with lox and cream cheese on Christmas morning, carefully picking off and unwrapping the little chocolate tree decorations with a reverence I save for basically nothing else in my life. It’s all just such a treat.

In a crowded field, though, I think the best thing about eating this time of year is party food. The phrase in itself is just so brilliant: it’s food making an occasion of itself, food that is having a good time, that has dressed the part just like you. Platters of ornately decorated, pastel-coloured cakes; profiterole stacks and a Black Forest gateaux in their towering majesty; the sheer performative nonsense of a sausage on a stick. Party food glitters and glistens on the table like the guests’ outfits – it’s uncanny and novel and it knows it’s being silly – and I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few weeks. 
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This is partly because social media loves party food as Christmas comes around – my Explore page on Instagram has been full of kitschy devilled eggs, 70s blancmange-inspired jellies, and tiny, identical gingerbread men for the last couple of weeks – but also because its re-emergence in the shops (M&S mini cheese gougeres, did I love until now?) feels especially apt at the moment. After all, we’ve come to the end of a year of food on the internet which was largely defined by two trends: “girl dinner” and “picky bits”, both of which found the fun in food, particularly for women. Our annual return to party food – to individual sausage rolls and tiny Yule logs and the delightful pointlessness of a slider – feels like the logical conclusion of 2023 in food.

To recap, this year, most would agree that there were few phrases more prominent online than “girl dinner”. Back in May, TikTok user @liviemather coined the phrase when making a video about her evening plate of bread, cheese and cornichons, and it sort of feels like we’ve never been without it. While there is a classic type of girl dinner – the type of personal buffet plate that skyrockets online, full of plump little pickles, fresh bread, golden butter and oily slivers of anchovy – since Mather’s video went viral, “girl dinner” has become a permanent internet punchline more generally. A pack of Babybels? Girl dinner. Tinned fish and a Kinder Bueno for dessert? Girl dinner. Lost Mary and a bag of Scampi Fries? That’s girl dinner too. Whatever the joke, the irony is always the same: girl dinner is anything except what you might think of as an actual meal. 

For some, then, upon its emergence, “girl dinner” was disordered eating aestheticised or made light of – dangerous and unbalanced and plainly not nourishing enough. For others, it was liberatory, bringing into the focus the little whims that a woman indulges when she is tasked simply with feeding herself, rather than preparing a meal for a husband, family, or both. 

I think the latter is definitely true and for what it’s worth, I also think girl dinner and acknowledging the fact that sometimes you just simply can’t be arsed is much healthier and more normal than the alternative manner in which some women perform eating online – that is, standing under ring lights and painstakingly making Instagram Reels about how to count the macros on something called a “nourish bowl” or whatever, but for me, once again, the most interesting part is the novelty. Easily the most resonant and charming thing about girl dinner is that whatever it is, there’s always something cute or funny about it that marks it out from plain old boring non-gendered dinner. 

“Picky bits for tea… I’m not cooking in this weather” – the much-memed clarion call of British mothers the minute it gets warm enough to hang the washing up outside – also saw women having fun with food in 2023. But while girl dinner felt quite universal in sensibility, “picky bits” honks with a loveofhuns-style UK sense of humour. “Picky bits” is a sleeve of packet ham fluttering in the summer breeze, Walkers Sensations snatched and shoved into gobs with flat, sweaty hands, breadsticks dunked in a four dip selection from Morrissons. It’s good precisely because it’s sort of shit – the snack equivalent of camp.

“What brings ‘picky bits’ and ‘girl dinner’ together in my eyes is twofold. Firstly, both see women simply having a laugh with food, rather than viewing it as a source of anguish or stress, as it has been for so long, and continues to be for so many.”

What brings “picky bits” and “girl dinner” together in my eyes is twofold. Firstly, both see women simply having a laugh with food, rather than viewing it as a source of anguish or stress, as it has been for so long, and continues to be for so many. And secondly, there’s something about the way picky bits and girl dinner are presented – whether it’s laying out a picky bits spread of Chipsticks, cold meats, and cubes of cheese artfully on the garden furniture, or making yourself a dish of bread, hummus and homemade kimchi so pretty you’re compelled to take a photo – that also feels particularly joyful: if you want it to be, food can be an event, even if it’s just for a party of one.

I see all of that positivity converging so much in party food, and I’ll be channelling it as I lay out rows of mini croque monsieurs and chicken poppers and a Vienetta trembling like an opera diva for my friends this Christmas. There is a femininity about party food – its delicacy, its sweetness, the fact that it’s designed to look as delectable as it tastes – that, like girl dinner and picky bits, puts enjoyment first. I’m not saying a “mini steak sandwich” or a teeny lemon pie topped with the cutest little puff of meringue is revolutionary or anything – but I do think that the idea that food can represent fun and frivolity and humour and lightness, amid a culture which so often posits it as the enemy, kind of might be. Girl dinner, picky bits, and the fabulous frivolity of party food show how. 

Words: Lauren O’Neill