So, who gives excellent dinner parties in New York, the Hamptons, Connecticut, or on Martha's Vineyard—places where I seem to go? Well, lots of well-heeled people do. But the invitation I never turn down comes from Barbara Walters. I have never had a bad time at Barbara's, or a bad dinner. That's because she has generosity, good taste, and a great sense of fun.

Usually Barbara has somebody special she is honoring, but she doesn't make a big deal of it. Her guests can be titans of media, government, or the arts, or one of her big "get" names from her television interviews. So these dinners are illuminating and often spellbinding, but Barbara always allows lots of leeway for informality.

She calls her round dinner table—or tables—to order at midpoint so that a general conversation can take place. If that isn't forthcoming, she mounts some good questions to get things started. Everybody is allowed to have a say. If you don't have fun and learn something at Barbara's, then you're just not trying.

It has been said that Barbara could easily assume the mantle of social leader of New York now that Brooke Astor has retired from the scene. In fact, this was suggested in The New York Times back in 1996 by the reporter Judith Miller. But since Barbara isn't about to give up her reporting or her entrepreneurial place in TV news, she doesn't have time even to try on the mantle.

Barbara doesn't hesitate to ask her guests to make a speech, sing a song, give a toast, or write a poem. At a party honoring Sir Howard Stringer, of Sony, and his Japanese boss, she asked me to do the honors. I wrote a little speech, had it translated into Japanese, then hired someone to teach me how to say the words phonetically and deliver the speech in Japanese. It was not a huge success—my performance, that is. But it was an honest try, and it delighted Howard's boss, Nobuyuki Idei, the handsome chairman from Tokyo.

I could talk about some high-and-mighty dinners I've had at Barbara's Fifth Avenue apartment. I could ask her for her most highfalutin menus. But my pick is one Barbara dreamed up on her own. It begins with a large offering of excellent caviar with toast and the works. What a warm-up! "That part is easy," says Barbara. "All you have to do is get your hands on rare, hard-to-come-by caviar. It's the rest of the dinner that seems to drive caterers crazy, but nowadays I think the people who work for me have it down pat."

For guests sated with choice beluga, next comes "the Children's Menu," perfected for the delight of kids of all ages. It includes small, delicious hamburgers and tiny hot dogs on delicate buns, which are wolfed down by people who can tell themselves, "Take two or three, they're small!" With them come cup-size ramekins of macaroni and cheese, French-fried potatoes, and little dishes of incredible coleslaw. For dessert: large servings of ice cream and sauces. All this accompanied by incredible wines. And when the coffee is offered, there are also big glasses of the one important thing many hostesses forget—ice water! I have watched grown men such as Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, George Steinbrenner, Jim Garner, Elton John, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kofi Annan, and Jack Welch all but cry with joy when they realize they are getting Barbara's "kids' meal." They are so relieved to be offered something they really like, instead of poached salmon or whatever else is currently floating society's boat.

Joan Ganz Cooney expects her guests only to show up on time and "come to the party."

Throughout dinner, the inimitable Forrest Perrin softly plays the piano in the living room, waiting for us to storm him and make our requests and start trying to remember the lyrics to everything Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Jerry Herman ever wrote. Barbara likes her guests to sing, and for her Christmas parties she always has the Salvation Army in to sing carols. They are religiously nonexclusive, so you can sing along, and it's not unusual to hear a Jewish mogul warbling "Chriii-sss-t the Saviour is born" right along with the Christians and their lions.

Barbara's only concession to posh at her parties is to ask everyone to sign her handsome guest book. It's always fun to put your John Henry down on pages featuring kings and queens, dethroned empresses, people who've walked on the moon, divas of the stage and screen, mighty anchormen and their women, politicians, and tycoons— stars, stars, stars—as well as Barbara's longtime childhood pals and her college chums.

A word about sweet stuff. I won't belabor the glory of candy, just because I am a junkie in constant need of the instant gratification I get from it. But I will say, offhand, the cheaper the better. While that's not always true, I honestly believe Godiva and those other fancy chocolates can't hold a candle to a Snickers or Hershey's bar, Butterfinger, or Baby Ruth.

Now, I know that upscale folks pretend they don't eat candy or even like it, but some of America's best hostesses prove that this is a myth at almost every one of their classic dinners. Tita Cahn, the merry widow of Oscar-winning songwriter Sammy Cahn, gives some of L.A.'s best at her house in Beverly Hills. Her guest mix is always breathtaking; it might include Jack Nicholson, Tina Sinatra, Sean Connery, Tony Danza, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Oliver Stone, Jeanne Martin (Dean's ex), Pat Newcomb, Gareth Wigan, Dominick Dunne, Larry King, James Woods, and Shakira and Michael Caine, along with the hottest agents and producers galore. I've seen them all there, including Frank and Barbara Sinatra before he left us.

So, after Tita has loaded these worthies down with Southern Italian cooking, what does she offer? Why, Raisinets! The men all seem to go mad for them, as if they could get a Raisinet only at Tita's. God forbid they'd ever personally go out and buy any.

Louise Grunwald is a party giver in New York, in Southampton, and on Martha's Vineyard. I've known her since she was debutante age, and I knew her best-dressed mother before her. Louise has cut a swath all her life—during her career working for Vogue, as the wife of a smashing tennis player, then of a charming investment banker, and now of the retired great managing editor of Time, Henry Grunwald. (Asked to name the quality her various husbands shared, Louise thought and said, "Well, they're all Caucasian!")

This delightful friend puts together evenings where you rub elbows with the top TV names, curators from the Metropolitan Museum, controversial tycoons such as Conrad Black and Alfred Taubman, the great British actor Simon Russell Beale, the New York Times drama critic Ben Brantley, leading designers, decorators, diplomats, the nation's most interesting governors, mayors, socialites, and intellectuals—even Nancy Reagan. Louise's dinners are open discussions, arguments, political and cultural harangues, all accompanied by the most delicious food imaginable.

As Henry's wife, Louise was a valuable secret weapon when he was ambassador to Austria under Ronald Reagan. As his better half on the Vineyard, she is rapidly filling the shoes of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and former First Lady Jackie Onassis, who left the Massachusetts island bereft.

Louise serves food you can get your teeth into—fried chicken, ham, hamburgers, steaks, chops, crisp vegetables, corn on the cob, roasted potatoes, Caesar salad, pasta with wonderful sauces, and all manner of delicious cocktail tidbits and desserts. And Louise always puts candy on her tables—wonderful bitesize sugared jellies in the shape of orange, lemon, and lime slices, tiny chocolate-covered caramels, nonpareils. I always mean to take just one, but ...

THE ANGELA MATOS SUPER COOKIE
Start to finish: 50 minutes

3 cups unsifted flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2  teaspoon salt
1 1/2  cups dark corn syrup
6 ounces sweet chocolate
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350°

CRUST: Grease the bottom and sides of a 15-inch-by-10-inch-by-1-inch baking pan. In a large bowl, with a mixer at medium speed, beat the flour, cup sugar, butter, and salt until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs; press firmly and evenly into the pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

FILLING: Meanwhile, in a 3-quart saucepan, stir the corn syrup and chocolate over low heat just until the chocolate melts. Remove from the heat. Stir in the remaining sugar, then the eggs and vanilla until blended. Stir in the pecans.

Pour the filling over the hot crust; spread evenly. Bake for 30 minutes or until the filling is firm around the edges but slightly soft in the center. Cool in the pan on a ire rack.

YIELD: At least a dozen cookies.

I mustn't forget another of my favorite hostesses, Joan Ganz Cooney, who was the driving force behind Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop. She has the Presidential Medal of Freedom to prove her worth. Wed to the Blackstone investment titan Pete Peterson, whom she is determined to keep alive and healthy, Joan offers the best of conservative dining combined with dieting without calling attention to it. The dinner conversation is so great it could, in the words of Scarpia to Tosca, "make you forget God." There's invariably a news-making mix of young, old, family, outlaws, in-laws, friends, enemies, movers, and shakers at the Petersons' tables in Watermill, on Long Island, Vero Beach, Florida, and Manhattan.

Joan's secret? She leaves her guests to their own devices, expecting them only to show up on time for meals and "come to the party."

When all is eaten and done, she offers the most wonderful moist cookies, made by her longtime housekeeper and majordomo, Angela. Pete is sent away from the table when these are served.

I'll end this by saying that the best dinner I ever attended anywhere was a "researched" dinner at Nora Ephron's. One never approaches a dinner invitation from that gifted writer and movie director with any hint of reluctance or boredom. She is a cook-entrepreneur who began making her reputation for loving food by arbitrarily including recipes in her witty and acerbic books, such as Crazy Salad and Heartburn. Many writers now include descriptions of meals and feats of cookery as therapy for their beleaguered protagonists. Patricia Cornwell's forensic heroine, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, comes to mind. Kay is forever easing her angst by whipping up something Italian to erase the strain put upon her by all those tortured dead bodies. This gives not only the good doctor a break, but also the reader. In Robert Parker's Spenser private-eye novels, we are provided with exercises in sandwich and body building, as well as beguiling pages of perfect food and drink, as we wait for the violence to occur and the crime to be solved.

Nora and her husband, the Mafia expert and writer Nick Pileggi, have a lovely apartment with fireplaces on the Upper East Side, in Manhattan, and somehow they have managed to be on the 15th floor and keep an unobstructed view of the inimitable Chrysler Building. But what else would you expect from the woman who gave us Cher as a lesbian, in Silkwood, Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in public, in When Harry Met Sally, John Travolta as a dirty-winged angel, in Michael, the Empire State Building as a hero, in Sleepless in Seattle, and Nicole Kidman as a witch, in Bewitched. (If there is one thing Nora does better than food, it's writing and directing movies.)

We can't all attract the kind of people Nora gets to come to dinner. Often she has movie stars such as Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Steve Martin, and Meryl Streep, or Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, who might as well be movie stars they are so V.I.P.-ish. On one special night, Nora produced—instead of high-voltage stars, who can sometimes throw an evening off with their importance—some real talkers and doers, people who know what's what. There was an Oscar-winning screenwriter, his wife, who is up to her hips in education, a famous literary agent, the head fund-raiser of a major political party, a writer for The New Yorker, a guy about to go to work for a seemingly hopeless but idealistic candidate, and a distinguished, witty former ambassador and his wife, whom I have mentioned earlier.

Barbara Walters doesn't hesitate to ask her guests to make a speech, sing a song, give a toast, or write a poem.

We can't all get that kind of guest list; we can only try. You would be surprised, though, at how willing important and semi-important people are to come to a free dinner. As a friend of mine says, "Just risk it. Put a Ritz cracker with WisPride on the windowsill and they will come." Risking it reminds me of my favorite limerick:

There once was a man from St. Paul
Who went to a fancy-dress ball.
He said, "Yes, I'll risk it.
I'll go as a biscuit."
And a dog ate him up in the hall.

So, O.K., the pre-dinner conversation that night was of a high quality as we mixed champagne with quips, gossip with history, and current events with contempt-all the usual suspects in public life came in for a skinning.

Then Nora did something unusual. She brought in a large book and sat on the arm of a sofa, quieted us down, and said she needed to read something to us. It wasn't short, but it was pertinent to the evening. The book was New American Classics, by Jeremiah Tower. Nora read us the following passage, which describes a Russian Easter dinner with formerly rich Russians who are so grand that they look down on the Romanovs:

The conversation soon turned to which wine was superior, Burgundy or Bordeaux, and then, white or red? My aunt would drink only Scotch, Cognac, and the very old first growths in prime condition. The rest of us drank anything good. My uncle had saved a dozen or so bottles of various esoteric things from before the revolution. He had been saving them for years, to teach me the immense difference between excellence and the very best possible. Talk of excellence divided the diners on the question of whether it is achieved through austerity or indulgence, purity or excess. Inevitably, the subject of decadence arose, with everyone invited to define it.... Cheremetev said the best definition came from his boyhood friend Prince Youssoupoff. The story involved Youssoupoff and a French count. When the question of what is decadence came up, the French count said something lyrical about beautiful women. Youssoupoff said, "Nonsense, my dear fellow, the epitome of decadence is to drink Château d'Yquem with roast beef." ... There was a silence as we all tried to conjure up, unsuccessfully, the dangers of that combination.... Years later ... I decided to hold a summer test of the Youssoupoff theory. I invited only my closest friends, those who would not seek vengeance if they became sick or pushed over the edge.... The taste of Château d'Yquem with the rich, aged, perfectly cooked roast beef was indescribable. And "taste" does not adequately convey the sensation, because what happens ... is like something out of recent space films—travel at warp speed through the stars. Only, with the wine and beef there is very little noise, unless it is the sound of someone going over backward in his chair and hitting the floor.... The rest of the menu is not important, because when the beef was served, and the wine was poured, when I demonstrated the necessary ritual of chewing the beef and taking a draft of wine, chewing twice and swallowing, there followed the familiar silence, the almost agonized sighs and rapturous smiles.

The best dinner I ever attended anywhere was a "researched" dinner at Nora Ephron's.

Nora closed the book and said, 'This is the experience we hope to duplicate tonight, only instead of Château d'Yquem, we're having a similar, less expensive wine—Suduiraut." We were all excited, and some people clapped. There was much discussing of the extraordinary thing she had read. One guest asked if Prince YoussoupofF wasn't the man who had helped murder Rasputin. After we trooped expectantly into her perfect white dining room, Nora sent us on to the kitchen, where we helped ourselves and came back to the round dining table.

Nora's menu included whole roasted carrots and parsnips to add to the perfect roast beef, which had been divided into rare and well-done parts. There were also beautiful green peas and those often-hoped-for-but-seldom-received English popovers. We slathered on the horseradish dressing.

I know that I took more than just two sips of wine with every mouthful of roast beef. But then, I never know how to hang back. It was simply great, a real new taste thrill. We then had a dreamy salad with some cheese, and Nora proceeded to bring to the table herself a white frosted cake with a crackling of amber curls on top. Looking back, I recall that even the women ate every crumb of this cake, because, after all, as the Marine captain said to his men, urging them over the top in World War I, "Who wants to live forever?" None of us had ever experienced such a cake before.

You can doubtless successfully imitate this interesting and well-researched and guided evening of perfectly thought-out surprise and charm. But probably no one but Nora can ever duplicate it. The idea is to find a perfect occasion, like a birthday, or maybe no occasion. Research, if possible, maybe on the Internet. Tell your guests what to expect and whet their appetites during cocktails. Carry it all off with panache, as if you believe in it with all your heart. Did Nora's evening constitute "decadence"? I don't think so. It was more like having been granted a degree from Oxford in a single evening, a true culinary education, a look into the vast beyond, a glimpse of paradise. 

Nora's Genoise Cake

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Heavily butter two 8-inch round springform cake pans and line with buttered wax paper, butter side up. Sprinkle with flour. Cream 12 tablespoons sweet butter and 1 cup sugar until fluffy. Beat in 3 eggs, one at a time. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Sift 1 cup cake flour with 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and a pinch of salt and add to the batter, beating until smooth. Pour the batter into the cake pans. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Cool on a rack and unmold it after about 20 minutes.

COFFEE-CRUICH CANDY TOPPING:

Sift 1 tablespoon baking soda and set aside.

Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup brewed decaf coffee, and 1/4 cup light corn syrup in a saucepan at least 5 inches deep.

Bring the mixture to a boil. Cook to Just below 310°F on a candy thermometer, to the hard-crack stage, where a small amount of mixture dropped into ice water breaks with a brittle snap. Remove from the heat.

Immediately add the baking soda and whisk vigorously until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan. The mixture will foam rapidly when the baking soda is added. Don't destroy the foam by excessive beating, but do your best to blend in the baking soda. Pour the foamy mass into two greased metal pans 9 inches square or one large greased metal pan or cookie sheet. It will look a bit disgusting, but be patient. Let it stand without moving until it is cool. Then knock the hardened mixture out of the pan and crush it between sheets of wax paper with a rolling pin. Store in a closed plastic container until ready to use. Lasts about a week.

ASSEMBLY: Whip up 3 cups heavy cream, adding about 1/2 cup sugar when it is almost whipped. Frost the bottom layer of the cake, add some coffee crunch. Put on the top cake layer. Frost the top and sides of the cake. Put into the fridge. Before serving, top this with a mountain of coffee crunch and serve additional whipped cream and more crunch on the side.

Excerpted from Dishing: Great Dish—and Dishes—from America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist, by Liz Smith, to be published this month by Simon & Schuster, © 2005 by the author.