Who’s coming to dinner?

How Two East Dallas Families Host

Story by RENEE UMSTED | Photography by VICTORIA GOMEZ

Adinner party at Sheetal and Dipesh Patel’s house isn’t just any dinner party.

They don’t even call them dinner parties. They call them cocktail experiences.

Five or six couples are invited to their neighborhood home for a special occasion, one that justifies getting a babysitter.

Weeks of planning goes into one of these events, where guests are treated to a multi-course menu featuring handmade cocktails and foods to pair with them. And the menu doesn’t just exist in Sheetal’s head; it’s printed out for guests.

“She’s the mastermind behind it,” Dipesh says of his wife. “I just execute a lot of the vision.”

Sheetal grew up in a family that enjoyed hosting, and it’s something she has embraced as an adult.

But the inspiration for the cocktail experiences came from an activity the Patels participated in while they were living in Washington, D.C. One of their favorite lounges, the Columbia Room, would offer cocktail-driven flights paired with small bites.

They’ve made the food and drink pairings their own by infusing the experience with spirits and foods they’ve enjoyed during their travels.

Dipesh and Sheetal have visited about 50 countries. About a decade ago, they took a 93day trip around the world, hitting 14 countries on six continents. Now, with two young children, they aim for two international trips each year.

“We try to go to kind of cool places where the kids can get a new, unique experience, and we can too,” Dipesh says. “And a lot of those places, we’ll try to get sitters to watch the kids while we explore the city as well. But all of that does lead to things that come back home, which normally will end up being a bottle of liquor or something we’ll learn about the cuisine there.”

For example, on a recent trip to Spain, they learned about Spanish vermouth, and they plan to incorporate it into a cocktail at their next event, which they hold about once a month. They’ve also introduced their guests to byrrh — kind of a French take on amaro, they say, popular in the 19th century.

“When people come over, they’ve never heard of a byrrh,” Sheetal says. “So we’ll show them the bottle, and we’ll talk about that. So it’s more of an experience where our friends learn more about spirits that they may not have tried.”

All of the liquor, glassware and supplies needed to prepare cocktails is stored in the Patels’ spirits library, a wall of built-in shelving featuring a sliding ladder.

Herman and Kelly Guerra say their new pool has become the main attraction at parties they host.

Neither of them have taken courses on mixology. Rather, they have consulted a few books to teach themselves, and they have a lot of practice.

“It’s amazing to see how different cultures deal with food and spirits and how it all comes together,” Sheetal says. “There’s ceremony to it, which I love, and that’s how we try to do it for our experiences.”

There seems to be an understanding among neighborhood families that the Guerras’ house is the place to be.

“We always seem to have people at our house,” Kelly Guerra says.

Kelly and her husband, Herman, both graduates of Bryan Adams High School, have sons who attended Hexter Elementary School, and their friends live in the area, around Eastwood and Lake Park Estates near Peavy and Garland Road.

Even before the Guerras installed a pool in their backyard, their home on Peavy Road was the hangout spot, complete with a trampoline, soccer goals, ping pong and plenty of room to romp.

Now, there are usually three or four kids in the house who don’t belong to Herman and Kelly.

It’s almost always informal. Friends of the Guerra kids just kind of show up. They have “the best” house and “the best”