- 36 minutes ago
For Amber Mayfield Hewett, hosting has never been about the table setting. It's about the feeling you create when people walk through the door. We sit down with her to talk about how that philosophy became a book, from idea to finished product.
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00:05My name is Bridget Bartlett-Royle. I'm the Senior Features Editor at Essence and this
00:10is Amber Mayfield Hewitt. Yes. And Amber, tell us a little bit about yourself,
00:16just a little bit about your background. Yeah, so I am from New York and I've been
00:21an event planner in New York for almost a decade now starting my career in
00:25television and working at Bravo TV and while I was there I was going to all
00:29these awful networking events and I really wanted to meet people and better
00:34connect with people so I started hosting these dinner parties just as a little
00:38side hustle after work to meet other black folks in the industry and one
00:42dinner led to another dinner and now I have a full service event company and I
00:47host these supper clubs every month and it has really become this beautiful
00:51journey of togetherness through food and hosting. That's the quickest version of
00:55the story. And tell us the title of your book, Your Turn, well you say it. Yes, yes.
01:01So the title of my book is called Your Turn to Host and it really chronicles
01:04everything I learned about party planning in my journey of having a supper club
01:09from my mom and my grandma and really aims to just document a hosting experience
01:14that's very reflective of how I grew up and how I experienced the world which was
01:18something I thought was missing in the hosting category. Awesome. So look in this
01:24day of social media it's intimidating to have gatherings at home. Would you all
01:29agree? Like the Pinterest perfect parties, everyone has cream furniture, cream living
01:36rooms. I just don't get it. Yes. And so for those of us like me who are, you know, we
01:44want to have
01:45gatherings and celebrations in our home but it can be daunting to think about
01:50planning it, cleaning up for it. Am I serving the right thing? Yeah. Is the the vibe right? So
01:57talk to us about how we should lead with authenticity and not, you know, aiming for
02:04this like fake perfection. Yes, yes. I think so much of the hosting narrative on social media
02:10and the landscape has become to be about how a party looks before we're talking about how a party
02:16feels. I think that parties and events and gatherings, they're a really personal way for
02:23people to get to know you and understand your taste and understand your family history and so if we
02:28could keep ourselves at the center of these experiences and understand that when people are
02:33gathering with you, they want to get to know you. They want, they don't want to get to know all
02:37the
02:37trends that you scrolled by on social media or try all the recipes that don't actually mean anything
02:42to you. They want to get to know you. So how can you tell a good story and share your
02:48point of view
02:49about the world through how you host? That's a perfect segue to one of my questions. So I had the
02:57opportunity to taste one of the recipes in Amber's book and I love that it was her grandmother's coffee
03:04cake recipe. Yes. It's epic, y'all. It's really, really good. How important is it to incorporate
03:11like our own family? You touched on it just now, but if you could expand on like our own family
03:17traditions, whether it's something that was passed on to us or something that we were starting
03:22ourselves, right? How important is it to, you know, infuse that into our hosting? Yeah, I think
03:30there's so much history and recipes and in our gathering tradition. So for me, like I've always
03:35had a sweet tooth, which I think I got from both of my grandmothers and my grandma would always make
03:40and my mom too, would make cakes for the church. And a lot of times they were making them from
03:44scratch,
03:44but that sparked my curiosity of like, all right, well, how does this all come together? And that's
03:50what made me start playing around in the kitchen to kind of try and recreate this coffee cake recipe
03:55that was memorable too, like the Entenmann's coffee cake that my grandma would have in the pantry. And
04:01so I think that then becomes a much more personal way to say, you know, this is the cake recipe
04:05I
04:05love to bring. Like if I'm going to somebody's house and they're like, what should you bring? And
04:10they say a dessert, I'm going to bring that, or I'll have that if somebody's staying the weekend,
04:14but it gives people a nice journey of story for how I grew up and what I like just from
04:19a recipe.
04:20So the more that we can be documenting and archiving and saving and remixing things that are unique to
04:26our family, the more interesting our gatherings will be. And it makes sense because they sort of
04:31become conversation starters. Exactly. Natural conversation starters are where does this come
04:36from? How did this come to be? What did you change about it? Like those are the things that really
04:40enrich gatherings and make them more interesting to attend. I think. Agreed. Will you all agree?
04:46Yes. Yes. Okay. So when you decided you wanted to write this book, your turn to host,
04:53what gaps did you want to fill that were in the cookbook slash entertainment book category?
05:01Yeah, that's a good question. Because for me, I think that a lot of hosting books are actually
05:06cookbooks with a hosting lens. And so you're filled with recipes after recipes and only a couple of pages
05:12about how to think about a party and have a point of view at a party. And as somebody who's
05:17been an event
05:17planner for the past decade, I approached it from the lens of here's every single step that I do
05:23when I'm approaching an event. How do I set intention? How do I figure out who's on the invite list?
05:29What's the timeline that I follow? So really what I made was this playbook that you can reference as
05:35often as you can to feel more confident about hosting because it's so much more than cooking. Of course,
05:40cooking is part of it. But there is like an authenticity and an intention that goes into
05:46all the other little surrounding details. So I hope to create something that can be a resource in that
05:51way and also really reflect our culture. I think so much of my category is really Martha Stewart or
05:57Buss. And you don't really see these luxurious, joyful gatherings filled with black folks in our
06:02culture. So I also wanted to accomplish that.
06:05Yeah. That leads me to another question I had for you because Martha Stewart has become,
06:13she's like the guru of all things, home entertaining and et cetera, right? Like long before the Food
06:20Network and HGTV. But there's another woman, B Smith, who I know a lot of you are familiar with,
06:28who did the damn thing. Absolutely. And doesn't get nearly as much shine. She had restaurants. She was,
06:36I mean, amazing, amazing. TV shows, books, magazines. Absolutely. Opened so many doors. Yes. Let's give her
06:41her flowers, right? Absolutely. And so I'd like to know, Amber, how do you feel knowing that
06:51you are also, as B Smith did, you're opening doors for younger black women, a new generation of black
06:58women who are going to feel more comfortable and more confident stepping into that space
07:03because of your book and the work that you're doing? Yeah. I mean, I think it's such a important
07:09legacy to uphold. I think I always cringe a little bit when people are like, oh, you're like black Martha
07:15Stewart. And it's no shade to Martha Stewart. You can't knock what she's built. She's lovely.
07:19But B Smith had a similar career and made her own impression on hosting in a way that is very
07:26important for us as a community to know and acknowledge because I always think there's
07:30nothing new under the sun. I'm not doing anything revolutionary. I'm doing things that are on the
07:35backs of B Smith and on the backs of A'Lelia Walker, who always had these wonderful salon gatherings
07:41in Harlem and made that entire LGBT community at that time feel like they had a space. We can't
07:47forget that because when we do, we start to relinquish the role of hospitality and gathering
07:54that our culture very much has contributed to and make it about somebody else's culture.
07:59So for me, to be able to do this work and to also remind people of how many other women
08:05have done
08:05this work, I hope it inspires us to continue pursuing this and how we build community together
08:11and also how we consider our careers. Again, B Smith had magazines, she had restaurants, she had
08:17books, she had television shows. And so what does that look like for us to continually have these
08:23sources where you're seeing black people in leisure and luxury and not just servitude?
08:29Love that.
08:30I could talk about that for hours, but I know I only got 20 minutes.
08:35Yes, yes. So, you know, this economy is tough. And having gatherings at home can be expensive.
08:45Yes.
08:46Like hosting, right? I have a girlfriend, a truth serum moment. Girlfriend that's an accomplished doctor.
08:53Her husband is a doctor. They're in a different tax bracket than me. And she is quick to say,
08:59hey, we're having a potluck.
09:01Yeah. I love a potluck.
09:02So, you know, let me know, put in the text, in the chat, what you're going to bring. And I'm
09:07like,
09:08yeah, why don't we all have, take that agency, right? To say, okay, I want to have something,
09:14you know, at the house this weekend. I don't necessarily want to spend this amount,
09:19but if everybody brings something, you know, we can pull it off.
09:22We can pull it off. Yeah.
09:23Yeah. So do you have more tips around like how to elevate a potluck dinner or a potluck brunch or,
09:32you know, something like that where everyone contributes, but you still want it to feel a
09:38little luxurious. You still want it to, you know what I mean?
09:40Yeah. I mean, first of all, to the point that you made initially, that gathering can be really
09:45expensive. That goes back to how we're viewing gatherings. Like it doesn't always need to be
09:49luscious and photo worthy and all of these flowers. Like we can really bring it down to brass tacks
09:54and say, how can I get people together often? So we are building community and staying in community
09:59and understanding what each other needs. I think the beauty of a potluck is that it allows people
10:04to meet you wherever they're at. Like I like to make a signup sheet and like, I'll have mains,
10:09sides, drinks, desserts. You know, if you need to bring the plastic forks, cause you're like,
10:14I don't got it or cooking is not my ministry. Exactly. Right. Like if you can start to make
10:21people feel included in it and not so much of like the vanity metrics of like, what are you
10:26bringing? And like, what are you bringing versus what I'm bringing? Like strip it all back and say,
10:31I want to host, I'm giving you the house. I'm making the chicken. Where can you meet me? If it's
10:36a half a bottle of wine, then bring the half a bottle of wine. And we're going to do this
10:39together.
10:39If we can start making each other feel good about what they bring to the table,
10:44that's going to elevate the experience. Cause some months I might bring you the coffee cake
10:47and some months I might need to bring you the seltzer and a little salad. Cause I can't,
10:51I just, and that needs to be okay. We need to make each other feel okay about that.
10:56Right. That's so important because it can seem on the surface, like, you know, this is not a big
11:01deal. Parties are fibrillous. Yeah. Right. But one common thread that's been coming up for the past,
11:06you know, day and a half is the power of community. Like community is our greatest currency.
11:11Yeah. And when we gather, I mean, look at this, right? When we gather something magical happens,
11:17it's therapeutic. Um, so, so thank you for that. And as hosts, we are the, the arbiters of that
11:24space. So we have to take our responsibility as hosts a lot more seriously than just how well do
11:29you cook and how well do you style flowers? Talk about that a lot. Right. Another great segue. What
11:35are three elements, three things we can all take away from this conversation that can help us,
11:41you know, when we go back to our designated like homes, respective homes and cities help us host.
11:47Yeah. And a, in a more, you know, an elevated way. Yes. So I think the first thing is that
11:53the role of
11:54the host is one that you need to take very seriously. If you're curating a space, the energy that you
11:59as a
12:00person bring to it is really important. The safety that you make other people feel is really important.
12:05So that might mean you're not inviting the uncle that makes a couple inappropriate comments and
12:10standing 10 toes down on that. Like you're not coming here when I'm having all these people here
12:14and you're acting like that. Like take the role of the host first as the curator of community and
12:21safety. So if that's your number one, everything else is going to flow a little bit better.
12:25I do think that even though my book is not a cookbook, food is important and food and making
12:31sure that you have something for everybody. So I know that we have a lot of different dietary
12:35restrictions and limitations, like ask people where they are at in their consumption, ask where they
12:40are when it comes to alcoholic beverages. So you have something that can meet everybody where they
12:45are. Or if you're doing a potluck, you can make sure that they bring what they will eat. Because I
12:50do
12:50think when people are in your space, you want them to feel considered. And that includes having
12:55something to offer them that they can actually eat. And then the third thing I would say is music.
13:01I think that music is like such an important part of how we gather, what we choose to listen to,
13:08the things that feel like oldies and goodies, the new music that we're discovering together. Like
13:12I would think that music can set the vibe for the senses in a way that whether you're offering a
13:18full
13:18course meal or just a bag of chips, if you hear something that you want to dance to, suddenly
13:23everybody's settling into a space. I would master those three things. Awesome. I'm so glad you touched
13:29on music because I know you cover music intentionally in the book. Yes, yes. But it's something we take
13:35for granted, right? Like the power of a, you know, a playlist. Yeah, and the music that makes us all
13:42tap our
13:42toes. And maybe that's a good icebreaker if somebody else also loves Patti LaBelle and can sing all of
13:48her songs. Like that might get them to have a conversation that they might not have had. Right, right, right.
13:54Love this. Well, we are going to wrap up. But this was such a soul filling conversation. And I hope
14:05you
14:05all enjoyed it as well. I have great news. You can purchase Amber's book right to my left. It is
14:15also, I wish we
14:16had a copy like right here. Yeah, I don't know where my bag is. Yeah, we didn't. But someone had
14:23it.
14:23My friends might have one. Oh, there they go. Look at them. Perfect. Yes. So you're gonna grab it? Yes.
14:27Thanks, mom.
14:28Thanks, mom. Yes. Isn't the cover gorgeous? It's a beautiful book. And I have a copy. So I'm a
14:36little, I have a copy in my kitchen. Yes. And I love having pretty things. I'm not the best cook,
14:43y'all.
14:43But I love having things like this in my kitchen. And even the book itself is a conversation starter.
14:49So anyway, the book is for purchase. Yes. Right here. Grab a copy. Amber may or may not be able
14:55to sign it. I have a Sharpie in my bag. So don't feel shy to say hi. Thank you guys
15:01so much for being
15:02here. Thank you.
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