Being a fantastic host is definitely a skill some people just have, but with a little bit of extra help from us, you can make your next dinner party phenomenal (whether you have the host skills or not). You can still be the host of dinner without having it in your physical space. Choosing the perfect restaurant to suit everyone’s dietary needs and inviting your friends makes you the one in charge. At Clifton Hill, you’ll find Kelsey’s and Boston Pizza, two different but equally fun environments to spend the night. Both have impressive menus with drool-worthy feature items and exciting entertainment like music, sports games viewings and more.
While choosing the right place and booking a table is arguably the most important part, it’s only one aspect of what goes into making dinner out on the town memorable. We’ve put together an expertly crafted list of fool-proof conversation starters and games to spark lively chats and get the group to really bond.
1: Introductions
Once all of your guests have arrived and the menus are scattered across the table, it’s time to break the ice by making sure everyone has had an introduction to the other members of the night. Encourage your friends to introduce themselves with their name and something that they want everyone to know about them. For some that might be what they do for a living, that they have 3 dogs, what they are studying in school, or even what their favorite film is. Let everyone choose for themselves what they’d like to share, hearing what they choose says a lot about their personality!
2: Starters
Keep the conversation relatively light from here while you all look over the menu items. For even faster bonding, encourage the table to order a bunch of starters to share, like cheesy and veggie topped nachos from Kelsey’s or juicy wings or boneless bites from Boston Pizza. Ask everyone to finish this sentence “This one time at band camp….”. It doesn’t actually have to be a story from band camp (seriously, do you even know anyone that went?), but instead, the story should be something ridiculous from when they were a teenager.
3: Two Truths and a Lie
At this point, everyone should have a pretty good sense of who everyone is, regardless of if they’ve just met for the first time tonight. Move on to a staple talking game once apps have been cleared and your main dishes are on the way. The game of the hour? Two truths and a lie. Each person says three-statements, two that are true facts about their lives and one that is a flat out lie. The other guests take turns trying to guess what the lie is, and whoever gets the most right has their dinner paid for by the group (or any other agreed upon prize).
4: Connect
Once your sizzling mains have arrived, it’s time to let the group focused conversation shift naturally into smaller discussions. As the host, you should try to keep a watchful eye on your guests, making sure that no one is left out from a conversation. Weave each smaller talk together by mentioning the relevancy of one person to a talk that someone else is having. If perhaps, someone is talking about an amazing piece of furniture they snagged on Facebook Marketplace and one of your friends is passionate about vintage items, get them in there! If the group needs a bit of help here, ask everyone to talk a little bit about a topic they are passionate about and whoever is the most interested in learning more with naturally start asking questions, leading to a separate conversation.
5: Questions and Answers
With dinner done and the table cleared (with the exception of drinks of course), ask the waiter to bring over as many scraps of paper as they can and enough pens for all of you (you can also prep and bring this to dinner yourself). Start the game by making a list of questions that everyone has to write an answer for anonymously. The questions can be anything from a favorite movie to their most embarrassing date story. Once everyone has written their anonymous answers, each person takes a turn collection the folded paper scraps and reading them out. The goal of the game is to try and guess who said what!
