As December marches on, a familiar festive dilemma rears its head for households across the UK: should we brave the kitchen carnage for Christmas dinner, or pass the burden to a restaurant? After several attempts at dining out on the 25th, renowned food critic Grace Dent finds herself still firmly on the fence.
The Allure of Letting Someone Else Cook
The pressure to produce a perfect Christmas feast has reached new heights. It is no longer viewed as a simple Sunday roast with extra guests. The modern expectation, amplified by TV shows and magazines, is for a table heaving with holly-embossed crockery, bejewelled carrots, and meticulously brined turkey. For the designated home cook, field-marshalling this "tinsel-strewn palaver" can feel overwhelming.
The obvious escape route is the local pub or restaurant offering "turkey and all the trimmings" for a set price—often around £79 per head, sometimes including a cracker and a festive drink. The appeal of handing over the sprouts and spare ribs is undeniable, sparing the cook angry tears and endless washing up.
The Hidden Stress of the 'Easy' Option
However, Dent warns that outsourcing Christmas dinner simply swaps one set of stresses for another. The home cook often becomes the designated table-finder, taxi-booker, and family wrangler. This involves herding a disparate group, from the vegan cousin and the relative with specific dietary demands, to the teenager who might slink in late with mysterious love bites.
Dent recalls a Christmas in a Lake District pub a decade ago, where the reality failed to match the twinkly, log-fire promise. The meal was passable but flawed—soggy parsnips, dry turkey, and a gravy drought—served by staff who clearly drew the short straw by working on Christmas Day.
When Luxury Doesn't Equal Enjoyment
At the other end of the scale, Dent once splurged on a two-person Christmas lunch at a fancy five-star London hotel, costing the equivalent of a short holiday. The setting was classy, with expensive crackers containing silk scarves, but the 11-course meal was interminable. It trapped them in the dining room so long that they hit epic post-meal gridlock on Holloway Road, missing the simple pleasure of a Paxo sandwich on the sofa.
This year, Dent has already made and cancelled two restaurant reservations. Even exhausted from filming MasterChef, she hesitates to commit her partner Charles to a local bistro blowout. By that stage of festive delirium, there seems to be nowhere quite like home.
The Unexpected Joy of Kitchen Carnage
Ultimately, Dent confesses a secret fondness for the homemade chaos. Despite the moans about fussy guests and the mountain of pans, there is a profound satisfaction in "getting Christmas done." It's a rare adult moment that connects her to a long line of matriarchs who, against the odds, delivered the festive feast.
You can let someone in a white hat take the strain, but as Dent concludes, the real question is: where's the fun in that? The messy, demanding, and deeply personal ritual of cooking at home, it seems, might just be what Christmas is all about.
