Latest for @tmagazine on edible spectacles. The new dinner party must not only feature delicious food: It must also now be immersive, and even slightly surreal. Gone, or at least sidelined, are flowers and china; in their place is an upending of the very idea of decoration. “It’s all gotten very theatrical,” says the Paris-based event planner and food curator Alice Moireau, 26, who also has a line of place setting accessories called Table. “It used to be Scandinavian minimalism; now it’s all about abundance.” There’s something subversive, if not unsettling, in that expectation. Yet treating food as ornamentation has long historical precedent. In ancient Greece, the banquet was a way of impressing others with one’s wealth and status. Our current tastes, however, hew closer to the ideals of the controversial Italian poet and art theorist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who founded the Futurist movement in 1909, in part as a reaction against what he saw as outdated modes of expression. As Marinetti explains in his provocative 1932 manifesto “The Futurist Cookbook” — which is more of a treatise on aesthetics than an actual cookbook — food can be a valuable tool for artistic expression. It is not enough, he writes, for a meal to satisfy an appetite; its presentation should delight all five senses. Marinetti calls for, above all else, absolute originality, from “the table setting (crystal, china, décor) extending to the flavors and colors of the foods” to “the invention of appetizing food sculptures, whose original harmony of form and color feeds the eyes and excites the imagination before it tempts the lips.” Thank you to: @alicemoireau @clarissedemory @carodiario_paris @alixlacloche @imogenkwok @lailacooks 📷 @charlygosp