A Toast to Good Hosts : Organization Is the Name of the Game When Orchestrating an Evening of Discussion, Dining or Diversion

“People who say they never entertain always have the same complaint: It’s too much work! Of course, there is work involved. The trick is to be organized in the kitchen so that when the guests come you can enjoy yourself.

“That’s the point of entertaining, isn’t it?”

The speaker is Claire Burt, veteran hostess of soirees great and small.

The subject was entertaining--how to plan, who to invite, what to do and eat and drink and talk about with the friends and strangers we invite into our social lives.

This being the time of year for celebrations big and small, we checked in with three local couples to find out how Orange County throws a party.

We found three distinct styles of entertaining and three different goals. What the couples had in common was enthusiasm for the “challenge”--that word was used repeatedly--of pulling off a successful event.

And maybe that, finally, is what separates the world of happy hosts from the universe of chronic guests.

Claire and Mac Burt entertain frequently in their Cowan Heights home for the “opportunity to exchange ideas in a setting that just happens to revolve around a meal,” Mac says. A few years from retirement, Mac Burt holds the lofty title of director of agricultural operations for Beatrice-Hunt-Wesson; he likes to refer to his job as “head farmer.”

“What interests us about entertaining,” he says, “is the people and the ideas and learning.”

Not to suggest that the Burts take their food and wine lightly--far from it. On more than a dozen occasions the gourmet duo has been auctioned off as a cook-and-butler team--good for one elegant dinner for eight chez Burt--to raise money for their favorite charities. On those evenings, the Burts prepare and serve a continental-style repast to a group that may or may not include friends or acquaintances, and they eat their own portions alone together in the kitchen.

More often, maybe half a dozen times a year, they invite three or four couples over for dinner, usually a coat-and-tie affair.

Claire usually begins planning her parties a month in advance, giving herself time to decide on a menu (often printed and handed to guests as they arrive), brainstorm an “interesting mix” of guests (including “new people all the time,” she says) and send out invitations.

When guests arrive, they’re greeted with a glass of champagne and a wall-of-windows view of the San Joaquin Hills at sunset. The panoramic view, says the hostess, is a good “distraction” for newcomers.

“I guess the hardest part of entertaining is to make complete strangers comfortable in your home,” she says. “Your house can help people feel more at ease by taking the attention off them, or off the worry about what to say.”

Soon the party moves into the dining room, where the couple Claire has chosen to “feature” will be seated high-profile: husband on Claire’s right, wife to the right of Mac. The other guests also are given assigned seats.

“I like to kind of have a plan for the evening, and that includes featuring one couple,” says Claire. “It might be the couple we know the least well in the group, or maybe a couple just back from an interesting trip, and we hope to make that part of the discussion. It depends.”

In addition to formal dinner parties and family get-togethers (Claire and Mac have three grown children), the Burts host three annual events of somewhat larger scale: a Christmas luncheon for 20, a birthday dinner for 12, and a “pickleball” tournament and potluck for 16 (pickleball being a hybrid of Wiffleball, badminton and Ping-Pong, sort of).

But large or small, parties at the Burts always include animated dialogue--the opposite, Mac says, of “gala chit-chat.”

In his house, “strong opinions come out, people make their points, and there are definite differences. But everyone always respects one another’s opinions.”

To which he adds, with a grin, “of course, if we know the people real well, then we just start shouting at each other.”

If there’s any shouting at the small dinner parties hosted by Wanda and Ty Cobb, it must be the sound of voices raised in a chorus of amazement, delight and congratulation. The Cobbs plan a dinner party like Napoleon planned a battle. And they cover about as much ground.

Two or three times a year, the Cobbs host what they call a “progressive” dinner in their roomy Tustin home--a structure they remodeled 6 years ago “with the idea of having parties,” Wanda says.

The four or six guests at these intimate dinners begin the evening in the Cobbs’ wine cellar, a cold but cozy 58-degrees-at-all-times home for Ty’s 5,000-bottle collection. There, Ty uncorks champagne, maybe a ’75 Tattinger, and Wanda serves appetizers. Maybe: fresh salmon, light cheeses, potato skins with caviar and sour cream.

The next stop is the wine-tasting room adjacent to the cellar, which is suitably appointed with six carved wall panels that tell a story of wine- and merry-making (culminating with the protagonist deep in his cups). Here the second course is served, perhaps pine nut salad with Belgian endive or herbal soup accented with a French Chablis. (Or, as Ty would say: a ’57 Graves Chateau Malartic-Lagraviere.)

Then it’s up the winding staircase to the dining room--to the custom-designed table with a circular glass top resting on a brass pedestal. The Cobbs wanted a round table so guests wouldn’t feel trapped at one end or the other, and they wanted a pedestal base so their long-legged friends wouldn’t be cramped. This is the place for entrees, which run the gamut from monkfish with two butters and two caviars to veal medallions with Port wine sauce. Whatever the food, it’s served with two or three accompanying wines.

The final progression is to the living room, where likely as not, Ty--who otherwise leaves the cooking to his wife--serves up one of his showy desserts, maybe bananas flambe. And coffee. Ahhh.

The Cobbs’ social calendar also includes:

Galas. The Cobbs open their home to many a 100-plus fete, some catered, some not, including an annual Christmas buffet for staff of St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, where Ty is director of cardiology.

Parties hosted by their children (two of the four still live at home), include elaborate Halloween dress-ups, ‘50s dances and birthday luaus.

All of which was taken into consideration when Wanda and Ty remodeled their house 6 years ago, a job that ultimately doubled the square footage and changed the layout so radically that they “might as well have torn the thing down and started from scratch,” Wanda says.

With parties in mind, they settled on a design with “good flow” through uncluttered rooms that open onto a brick front court and terraced back yard. They built a state-of-the-art kitchen for Wanda’s artistry (this is a woman who can spend 15 minutes rhapsodizing about buffalo mozzarella cheese). And Ty’s wine cellar was carved from a scruffy storage area.

“Of all the parties we have, the progressive dinners are our favorites,” Wanda says. “I have fun poring over cookbooks and magazines, and Ty has fun selecting the wines. Then we try to make a marriage between the food and the wine. It’s stimulating for us. It’s an intellectual challenge.”

Like others in their thirtysomething-and-childless set, Gary and Tricia Babick do most of their entertaining outside the home, most often in the company of Gary’s clients or business associates.

“I would guess that 75% of the entertaining we do is business-related,” says Gary, a senior tax manager with Ernst & Whinney, an accounting firm. That’s 75% of a social life that includes six or seven events each month, conducted in the restaurants, theaters, concert halls and sports arenas of Orange County and Los Angeles.

One week last summer went like this:

Wednesday: Meet a couple of friends for dinner at the Center Club, then cross the street to the Performing Arts Center for a Gershwin musical.

Thursday: Pick up a client and his wife at their home, drive to the Hollywood Bowl for a picnic dinner and Beethoven concert.

Friday: Taken by client to the Stadium Club for dinner, then to an Angels game.

Not that the Babicks, who live in Corona del Mar, aren’t a couple of homebody hosts on occasion. Tricia loves to cook dinner for small groups of friends or help out when Gary works himself into a barbecuing frame of mind. Last spring they hosted a party that looked like dinner for four in the early planning stages and grew to an ambitious buffet bash for 40.

“We tend to be very informal and spontaneous about entertaining in the home,” says Tricia, who works as an administrative assistant in Long Beach. “When Gary invites people over, he likes to say, ‘If you’re wearing socks, you’re too dressed up.’ ”

Not exactly the operative dress code for this couple most of the time, however. Because of its central location (and ambiance), the Performing Arts Center’s members-only Center Club is the launching or re-entry point for many of the Babicks’ hosted nights on the town. And while their evenings spent with Gary’s clients and associates may include some “peripheral business discussions,” the tone is “far more pure enjoyment than work.”

Says Gary: “I don’t recall that we’ve ever invited anyone out whom we didn’t really enjoy being with in the first place, business or no business. We’re just the kind of people who like to go out to see concerts and ballgames and special events like that, and it’s more fun for us when we go with another couple.”