The Supper Series That Builds Community Around the Table

Rip & Tan: How did the idea of It’s a Dinner come about? How did your previous experience in the food world inform your approach to It’s a Dinner?

Ana Hito: My grandfather had a large piece of property in Upstate New York and left it to my family. Once he passed, it became a farm and the next natural thing was to throw impromptu dinners for my friends, highlighting the produce our farm had to offer that week, day, or season.

Very seamlessly it evolved into something bigger—in 2016 a team of friends and I threw a 75 person ticketed event and It’s a Dinner began. It’s a Dinner has grown and changed exponentially since that first ticketed event 5 years ago, but the idea of friends gathering to celebrate what their community has to offer has stayed very much the same.

Rip & Tan: Whether you’re sourcing from your farm or other local businesses, you’ve certainly mastered the art of field-to-table dining. How do your hyper-local ingredients inspire the concepting of your menus?

Ana Hito: Local ingredients, businesses, and independent makers shape what we serve at any given dinner—more often than not, our menus are decided the week of the dinner according to what is available to us at farms and small businesses that surround our farm or the farms wherein which we host dinners. In my cooking, I want to showcase what’s available in the community that surrounds the dinner table in an elegant yet unfussy way—there’s no need for foam or bubbles when you cook with what’s in season and available locally to create a meal that’s warm and comforting and fresh.

Rip & Tan: Do you have any advice on how we can make our own kitchens more sustainable?

Ana Hito: Use everything in every way you can! As we settle into fall, use lemon rinds in your braising liquid for carrots or other root vegetables, blend all your almost bad herbs into a bright and punchy salsa verde to put on literally anything, or save onion skins and scallion tops to make stocks that can be a base for whatever soup you’re feeling the most right now.

Rip & Tan: What role does community play in your dining experiences?

Ana Hito: Community plays every role in our dining experiences—we have created a community of small businesses, farms, and makers who make our dinners possible, and in bringing people together over an appreciation for good food and eating seasonally, we hope to forge new communities on our own farm and beyond.

Rip & Tan: Tell us a bit about the menu for the Amagansett Wellness Retreat. Where did you draw your inspiration from for the dishes?

Ana Hito: The Hamptons is beautiful and bountiful in many ways—a quick trip to our favorite farms and farmers markets inspired dishes focusing on carrots and peaches, which taste best in August, and we’d be remiss if not to mention fish—it’s so extraordinarily fresh out East, and we love nothing more than popping over to the local fish market and asking our fish guy what we should be eating and serving!

Rip & Tan: Are there any seasonal flavors and ingredients you’re currently loving?

Ana Hito: We love squash and we’d encourage you to sign up for our newsletter if you love squash too—we have an issue all about squash coming out soon, and we think it really encompasses the versatility of this magic vegetable. For us, it absolutely screams fall and winter and it’s gracing our tables in many different ways this season—fritters! Soups! Salads!

Rip & Tan: What do you consider to be the must-haves for hosting the perfect outdoor dinner party?

Ana Hito: Any dinner party, whether indoors or outdoors, should be enjoyable for you, the host. The food shouldn’t be fussy—it should be beautiful, of course, but it should also be perfectly fine to hang outside for a while so that there’s no worrying on your end if your guests are a bit late (and let’s face it, they will be.)

Other than that, you need a good cocktail (points for a batched cocktail that you can make and forget about!) and a good table setting situation—keep an eye out for our magazine, coming to our website soon, which will give you the low down on our go-to glassware, candles, and dishware.