10 Extreme Dinner Parties
For some, hosting a dinner party at home is challenge enough, especially when moving the meal from indoors to out. Others are looking for an even greater challenge (OK, or to break a Guinness World Record). Case in point? One underwater dinner party purportedly planned for 2,500 guests in one London swimming pool. Guests at the soirée were decked out in only the finest evening wear, courtesy of a select few London fashion houses. The dinner party wasn't the first of its kind (a similar dinner took place in 1991), but given its size and elegance, the goal was to make it an alfresco dinner party quite unlike any other.
Click here to see the 10 Extreme Dinner Parties Slideshow.
Or consider one dinner party situated on a remote strip of beach that was only accessible come low tide. Everything, from tables and chairs, to dinnerware and food, for all 100 guests had to be walked down at a precise time. Twelve hours later, guests arrived — but by the end of the meal, the tide had already come in, leaving a few with wet feet and a couple of splashes from the waves breaking below. With the isthmus transformed into an island at high tide, there left only one way for guests to leave: by boat. (The tables weren't as lucky — they were floated to shore).
The earliest example of extreme dining we found can be traced back to 1989 (and is what inspired the team behind the underwater dinner), when a Social Climbers group organized an event at over 22,500 feet atop the summit of Mount Huascaran in Peru. But it wasn't the last.
Click here to see the 10 Extreme Dinner Parties Slideshow.
This past spring, Sunday, May 1st was like any other weekend day. But for a group of paying guests, and some others who were able to steal a free seat when they walked on, their ride across the East River on a Brooklyn-bound L train was unlike any other. The multi-course meal was the work of several supper clubs and featured luxuries like caviar and foie gras, with a gold-leaf dusted chocolate panna cotta for dessert. At each stop, another course boarded the train, leaving guests mere minutes to devour and savor before yet another dish appeared at each place.
And just a few weeks ago, there was a pop-up dinner party with guests dressed all in white at the World Financial Center. But what's next? We've seen (OK, heard about) dinner parties in the nude and found a number of dinner parties held while being suspended more than 180 feet in the air — even some take place on a piece of ice floating in the middle of the Antarctic. Dinner parties over a bed of flames? (Just don't try it at home.)
Click here to see the 10 Extreme Dinner Parties Slideshow.
Clips from some of our favorite dinner parties:
Dinner in the Sky in Las Vegas
Dinner party on a London train