"Girl Dinner” Is Our Favorite Summer Meal

Like dewy skin and light blue nail polish before it, the humble snack plate got a TikTok rebrand. Meet: “girl dinner.”

What is girl dinner?

For starters, magical. Freeing. Girl dinner is something you’re excited to eat. It’s bits and pieces of random leftovers on a plate. It’s a snacky charcuterie board. It’s easy, has little cleanup, and—perhaps most importantly given the heatwave—doesn’t require any cooking. Oh, and it doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive.

Girl dinner is about utilizing ingredients/items you already have in your kitchen and pantry. Olivia Maher, who is credited with coining the term, calls it essentially hunting and gathering in her own kitchen.

She told The New York Times that the concept was inspired by a convo she had with a friend about how satisfying bread and cheese are. (Agreed.) “We love eating that way, and it feels like such a girl dinner because we do it when our boyfriends aren’t around, and we don’t have to have what’s a ‘typical dinner,’” she says.

This low-effort assortment of ingredients is incredibly versatile in several ways. First, and most obviously, there are so many different combos you can put on your girl dinner plate.

Secondly, girl dinner transcends time and place. It can be a struggle meal eaten in bed with your comfort show on autoplay, and it’s equally as fitting as an elevated assortment of items, like burrata topped with hot honey, cherries, sliced cucumber, and bread.

However, even though girl dinner is made up of snacky items, it’s meant to be more substantial than just a snack. It’s meant to be filling and contain all the important food groups.

Some of our team’s girl dinner combos:

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