How to Host
a Socially Distanced Barbecue

Here’s a maxim for entertaining in the age of Covid-19: The only way to bring people together is to figure out how to keep them apart.

So on a recent blue-skied afternoon, I stretched a tape measure to six feet while my husband, Daniel, arranged chairs and folding TV tables in our narrow Brooklyn backyard. We had just enough room for seven people in a distanced oval: four guests, plus our family of three. I was positively giddy at the prospect of cooking for friends for the first time since the pandemic began.

Back in rainy March, as New York entered lockdown and we huddled in place, my family and I tried to become self-sufficient by stocking up on beans and pasta and what we thought were far too many cases of wine. (It wasn’t.) We felt uncertain about grocery shopping and receiving packages, and were becoming anxious about what lurked in every human interaction. But after a few weeks, we realized it was human interaction we craved the most. Not beans, not wine.

Every Zoom cocktail hour with friends and family had an edge of sadness, and each virtual quarantini seemed to intensify the pangs of disconnection as much as quell them.

We were determined to find a way to entertain safely — and in person.

Depending on where you live, guidance from your local authorities and your comfort level, it may be possible to get together outside in small, physically distanced groups where guests can remain at least six feet away from one another. Even as we texted our invitations, we knew there was no way to have people over that was 100 percent safe. But there were ways to reduce the risks.

Our goals were to be as careful as we could, given our knowledge of the virus, and to use the comfort threshold of the most anxious person in the group as our guide. Because while pandemic etiquette was new to all of us, making guests feel at ease and welcome in our home is not.