Hi all. Have a question regarding culture please. We have returned to France to live after living in the country for some 15 years previously. Coming back after 10 years away. When we used to get invites for aperitif it was obvious this was for one hour or maybe two. Now we have had two different invites. One from French and the other from Brits. It is evident it was not aperos as we knew it but was a full blown party and expected to go on til midnight. Has the aperitif changed? Are we out of touch?
I think youâve noticed the arrival of the apĂ©ro dinatoire! Lots more small dishes spread out over the whole evening
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What on earth is that? Dinatoire had nothing to do with it. We did not dine. Just crisps and peanuts and little feuilletes. From six til midnight?
Also why not say dinatoire rather than apero in invite?
Think iâm too old for this new fangled way 
Thatâs not how we do it! Wife wonât allow crisps (chips) in the house for a start - think along the lines of satays of aiguiltettes de canard etc.
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Bit of a shock. Never been invited for apero to find a party!
Agree if this is the trend then serve good food.
However we would prefer to rest with the old style. Invite for aperitif, invite for dinner. Much simpler to know where one is at
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Thankfully my wife would never tell me what food is or is not allowed in the house 
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100% in agreement!. We loved the traditional apéritif invite. 18h -19h, or perhaps a touch more. A couple of drinks, a few little things to eat and then back home.
This apĂ©ro dĂźnatoire trend we hate! Too much, too long, and often meat or horrible processed stuff we wonât eat. Give me a proper dinner any day with good food, good conversation and comfortable chairs.
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Spot on Jane 
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That is really interesting. We hated it too! Hours of stood up. No real interaction between neighbours. No real food. Just nibbly stuff. We were shocked as never experienced that before.
Would like to have proper chats with our invites. We think when we invite we will say on our cards from 18h00 a 19h30 as was always the case when we last lived here.
This is not to say we do not like a party as we do. Just want to get the aperitif thing nailed
We never stay until late.
We both have bad backs and all this hanging around before eating does us no good at all.
Here, we sit down with our aperitifs and then go into the meal.
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I think itâs a great idea to put the time limit⊠eg 18H - 21H or whatever suits
Simply giving the start is no goodâŠ
Recently, I was asked to help clear the Hall quietly, when folk showed signs of staying until dawnâŠ
I asked mine-host if he had a large bell, so I could âquietlyâ ring âtimeâ âŠ
and then spent a happy few minutes explainingâŠ
mine-host looked bemused/alarmed.
Mustnât let folk feel weâre trying to get them to go⊠was his feeble splutterâŠ
despite that being exactly what he wantedâŠ
Mind you there were enough Brits there that they would have quite understood the clanging and my polite bellow⊠both are standard stuff at chucking-out-timeâŠ
Despite being bell-less⊠we managed to gently steer folk towards their homes before midnight chimed and we all turned back into pumpkinsâŠ
Incidentally⊠this was a proper apero-banquet⊠nibbles, starters, maincourse and desserts all laid out on serving tables⊠so folk could help themselves and eat/drink at their own pace⊠local caterer was superb
and the band was just greatâŠ
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Nothing simple about apéros here! As we discovered after some months, the French thinking behind the event was that it was planned for a couple of drinks and nibbles but the hosts always had contingency plans for more substantial eats if the atmosphere was sympa. In a couple of memorable cases this included a full-blown BBQ.
So we made contingency plans too for a late evening meal should it be necessary
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But a communal organised event, rather than a simple invite to the neighbours. Our foyer does similar several times a year and they go on foreverâŠ
Nope, it was a private birthday celebration, invitation only⊠but the invitation only said the start time 19H and not the finishâŠ
Actually Iâm grateful for her removing that possibility of temptation. We buy virtually everything we eat on local markets and we donât yet have any local producteurs de chips artisanales. Tempting stuff, but very fattening and ultimately best avoided.
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Each to there own, I can think of loads of food that are worse, there again we are quite plain in our cooking as we look after my FIL who has dementia and only eats certain foods.
I have never been into the food snobbery that a lot of our friends preach, who try to out do each other all the time and look down on plainer foods with their fancy foods and cooking.
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OTOH itâs often not food snobbery, just wanting to eat decent unadulterated, non-industrial food, which is the major contributor to UK and US obesity and probably dementia too. Donât you ever wonder why most of the people in US TV news feeds look massively overweight compared to folk here in France?
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This is an interesting and useful thread.
I decided to look through the list of recipes helpfully linked by @DrMarkH above. Somehow describing one of them as " Toast beurre de cacahuĂšte" sounds so much more enticing than the English.
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But I must say that Iâve noticed a marked difference in France over the last, say 20 years, with many many more âlargerâ folks around. Still a bit to do to catch up with the US and UK though.
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