‘You can host with just a sandwich’: Hetty Lui McKinnon on becoming an imperfect host

Hetty Lui McKinnon: ‘It’s more important to eat with a person than it is to have this perfectly laid out table.’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Hetty Lui McKinnon always wanted a round table. When the Chinese Australian food writer moved to New York, she finally got her wish.

The table literally and figuratively opened her home up to a community she was trying to create. “When you eat around a round table, everyone can see each other’s faces. Everyone can speak equally,” McKinnon says. “It created this incredibly warm environment.”