Progressive dinner

A progressive dinner or, more recently, safari supper, is a dinner party with successive courses prepared and eaten at the residences of different hosts. Usually this involves the consumption of one course at each location. Involving travel, it is a variant on a potluck dinner and is sometimes known as a round-robin.

An alternative is to have each course at a different dining area within a single large establishment.

Safari supper
In a safari supper, the destination of the next course is generally unknown by the participants, and they have to decipher a clue before moving on. Participants go to each house for the various courses. Often there is a regional theme for each dinner, such as Italian, German, or French. Various wines to suit the courses are often served at each location.

A challenge is keeping the food warm and ready at each location. An alternative is to have the courses at different restaurants. This style of eating has recently become popular as a charity fundraiser in rural Britain and is seen as a good way of meeting different neighbors in the community by virtue of each participant having separate guests.

Safari supper (dish)
No doubt inspired by the Safari Supper children's TV dinner released in the US by Libby's in 1970, containing fried chicken, alphabet spaghetti, meatballs and tomato sauce, corn and potatoes, chocolate pudding, and chocolate milk flavouring, the term "safari supper" can also be used to describe a type of baked curry consisting of ground beef and rice in a spicy-sweet sauce.(Safari supper )

History
The original form of the progressive dinner was a couples mixing event held at a single location. It was popularized by a wave of syndicated newspaper items published throughout the American Midwest in the late 1880s. The items typically referred to it as already popular and originating in "the east," citing as inspiration the progressive form of the card game euchre, itself created a few years before. For example, an item appearing in the Daily Republican of Anthony, Kansas in 1886 says The latest rage in social circles east is "progressive" dinner parties. After each course every guest changes places in a sort of puss-in-the-corner fashion. This keeps the couples well mixed up -- a person changing partners half a dozen times during the dinner. By 1898 a new form of the dinner had been introduced in which guests went from one house to another after each course. The Chicago Tribune of Feb. 4, 1899 described one such dinner in an article headlined "Eat From House to House."

References in literature

 * The Safari Party: A Comedy (2002), a play in three acts by Tim Firth.