Business

Hosting a dinner party? There’s now a one-stop shop in Boston for that.

Planning a trendy dinner party just got easier at Aperitivo The Shop, which sells items like martini olives, bread-shaped candles, and vintage glassware.

By Katelyn Umholtz

June 28, 2024

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Dinner parties and supper clubs are having a moment in Boston. Now there’s a store built for your dinner party planning needs.

Aperitivo The Shop opens in the North End this month, meant for both hosts and guests to grab whatever they may need for a dinner party — be it a loaf-shaped candlestick holder, olives for martinis, or funky vintage glassware. 

Behind the shop is Maria Colalancia, who also started the Aperitivo Society last year, one of the handful of supper clubs that have taken off as an alternative dining option for Gen Z and millennial diners, as covered by The Crimson. She credits her DNA — her father is Italian and her mother is Irish and Croatian — as a reason she loves sitting around a table, in the company of loved ones and new faces alike, around plates of delicious food and bottles of wine. 

“I grew up in a family where Sunday dinners were just a regular thing,” Colalancia said. “Now in my adult life, I really try to replicate [it] because it’s so comforting to me.”

So obviously dinner parties are not new. They were culturally relevant after World War II, a tool used by the growing middle class to network and show off wealth. 

Dinner parties never went away, of course, but they’ve been getting a very millennial makeover over the last few years. At least in the U.S., the resurgence began pre-pandemic and online, with people sharing dinner party inspiration, ideas, and experiences on social media. Colalancia’s Aperitivo Society really got its start in 2023 after a TikTok post went viral. 

“I had 700 people sign up for this thing that didn’t even really exist yet,” Colalancia said.

Services and stores similar to Colalancia’s ventures also popped up in other city’s, like the successful Big Night in New York. 

How the scene has differed from dinner parties past was its “effortless” aesthetic (for example, mismatched plates on purpose) and the goal was to meet people. 

That latter part became especially important to dinner party guests in other cities, too, after COVID-19, Colalancia said. It might have taken Bostonians some time to get with it, but the lack of get-togethers and human interaction would end up making dinner parties and supper clubs a comfortable option to make friends.

“I think the world is softening a little bit, just looking for things that are fun and easy,” Colalancia said. “[It’s] kind of in response to how hard everything has been recently and how hard everything continues to be. There’s something so timeless and comfortable about going over to someone’s house for dinner.”

She similarly started the Aperitivo Society to make friends in her new home of Boston. She’s spent over a year either helping hosts plan their own parties, or holding supper clubs at restaurants or other businesses for about a dozen diners. 

No matter the event, if it’s at someone’s house or a restaurant, she always highly recommends that guests come alone so they can meet new people.

“It’s always a group of strangers,” Colalancia said. “We encourage people to buy single tickets and come alone.” 

But the goal for Colalancia, who studied retail and fashion merchandising in college, was always to open a shop. 

Inside the store are shelves and dinner tables of curated items that could be meant for a dinner party, or for planning a dinner party, or for gifting a deserving dinner party host. 

There’s the obvious dinner party needs, like food and drink, from packages of linguine and Calabrian pepper spreads to non-alcoholic beverages. 

Then there’s the cookware, maybe more fitting for the frantic host who’s about to braise chicken and needs a dutch oven (Colalancia’s got you covered with the millennial-beloved Great Jones). 

Though there’s plenty of new in here, Colalancia said she really wanted to offer vintage finds as well. A glass case holds dozens of vintage glassware, which Colalancia recommends mix-and-matching. 

Then there’s the gifts: funky food-shaped candles, a small selection of cards, and cookbooks from Bon Appetit alums. 

“The vision for the space is a true extension of the Aperitivo Society,” Colalancia said. “The idea is to have everything and anything you could need to host a dinner party or a gathering or aperitivo with your friends.”

The interior is Colalancia “exploded in a space.” There are martinis drawn onto bright red accent wallpaper, which make the otherwise clean white space more convivial. Some mid-century accent chairs — in a shade of green reminiscent of olives in a martini, Colalancia’s favorite drink — from AllModern sit at the front of the store. And when you enter, you’re greeted by the store’s motto, in red letters: We met at dinner.

Meeting people at dinner is obviously key to her supper club events, but she also wants the message to mean something at the store as well. 

That may look like community events at the shop, like classes to paint menus and decorate bouquets.

“I really want to promote it as a space where people feel comfortable can be really comfortable just hanging out and using it as a go-to destination to find what they need and have someone know their name,” Colalancia said

Aperitivo The Shop officially opens June 29 at 26 Prince St., just around the corner from Mike’s Pastry in the North End.