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One day, while walking down West 10th Street, I saw a line of people forming on the sidewalk. Strange as it is to say in a place as densely populated as New York City, seeing quite so many people was unusual: West 10th is a quiet West Village block, with tourists preferring to mill about the luxury stores lining Bleecker Street, or the many restaurants on Hudson. I thought it might be a running club gathering, or a stoop sale. (Always stop by a stoop sale.)
I did not expect it to be for a party store.
But that was before I knew about Big Night—the impeccably curated store that somehow has exactly what you need to host, and then some. There are shelves stocked with olive oil, artisanal jams, and tinned fish, glasses by Sophie Lou Jacobsen, and martini cocktail napkins by Atelier Saucier. Taper candles hang by the dozen from the wall, as do cutting boards and pasta drainers—perfect for the boxes of Rubirosa lumache that sit near a fridge full of Nom Wah frozen dumplings. (Don’t worry, there are also bottles of Flamingo Estate’s Roma Heirloom Tomato Dish Soap to help with clean-up afterwards.)
Founder Katherine Lewin came up with the concept for Big Night after realizing that she and her friends loved the idea of hosting…but were also intimidated by it. “People associate dinner parties with seated dinners, where things are on the table at the right time and everyone’s seated nicely using their matching plates,” she says. Lewin, a former editor at The Infatuation, knew that wasn’t strictly realistic: some of her favorite evenings had unfolded over paper cups, mismatched plates, and a pasta dish made on the fly. Why were people made to feel that everything had to be just right?
So, she opened Big Night, a store that celebrates the joyful eccentricities of entertaining. “This store has always been about showing people how easy and how fun it can be—and how you don’t have to be an expert cook or chef, and nothing in your house has to match,” she says. All you have to do is to gather people at home. That’s really the starting point.”The first brick-and-mortar store opened in Greenpoint in 2022, with a second outpost in the West Village—Memphis-like in its design—quickly following.
One day, Lewin got an email from an editor at a publishing house who had stopped by. Big Night wasn’t just a store, the editor argued; it was also a book. Did Lewin want to work on something?
“So a book was born from a cold email. Big fan of a cold email,” Lewin says, laughing.
The result, Big Night: Dinners, Parties Dinner Parties, is out today. It’s first and foremost a cookbook, full of crowd-pleasing recipes mostly meant to feed six or more. There’s potato salad, hearty pasta dishes, tacos, artichoke dips, and instructions for how to create the perfect cheese plate; and while one section is dedicated to executing a “friendsgiving,” another lays out the perfect dishes for a birthday party. (Also in the mix? A menu designed for meeting your significant other’s parents, and suggestions for long al-fresco lunches.)
Just like the store, Big Night the book is playful and without pretense. Lewin includes casual, almost off-the cuff charts: a “sides matrix” has an X-axis labeled “time” that ranges from “less than 30” to “I Can Do A Project.” Another helpfully lays out important by-the-numbers information: there should be three olives per martini, a single bottle of sparkling wine can yield seven spritzes, et cetera.
It’s also a hosting guide. Lewin dots her pages with helpful entertaining tips (“Buy extra ice—more than you think you need”), as well as instructions for how to set a table. True to her nature, she’s more realistic than aspirational: “No one cares if your place settings match. And if they do…that’s their thing, and it certainly doesn’t need to be yours,” she writes.
“So much of the pressure that we put on ourselves when hosting is entirely from ourselves,” Lewin says. “No one ever knows if you make mistakes or you forget something or you decide to bail on a plan that you thought you had. The best thing you can do is set yourself up to actually enjoy yourself.”
And now, with her stores and book, more people can have their best big night too.
