Notes from a private dinner for eight.

The brief arrived by voice note: eight people, a garden in Rosedale, someone's fortieth, 'not too formal, but not casual either'. We translated that as: no service staff hovering, family-style plates on the table, real candles, and a menu with a beginning and an end.

We wrote the menu on the back of a paper bag from the market, which is where all our best menus come from. Suya skewers to start, something to hold with your hands while the conversations find their footing. Pepper soup next — our version with goat and utazi leaves, clear and clean and hot. Then the table: jollof from a copper pot, egusi, grilled prawns, pounded yam.

The best private dinners feel inevitable, like the host has always known exactly what their table should look like on this particular evening.

The detail that no one notices until they do

We arrived three hours early. The garden had a jacaranda tree that dropped flowers without warning, which meant the tablecloth needed to be dark. We switched it. We lit the candles before the sun went down because we find that people don't know they want candlelight until it's already there.

The jollof was started at the studio and finished over wood in the garden, which is something we only offer when the occasion earns it. The smokiness that comes from that second fire, the smell of it moving through the garden, is worth the logistics.

Dinner ran for four hours. The puff puff came out near midnight, warm and dusted, and someone said it felt like Sunday morning at their grandmother's house. That is the remark we would most like to receive, always. We packed the leftover soup in sealed jars and left them on the kitchen counter without saying anything. We were gone before anyone noticed.