The Best Cocktail Napkins Are MyDrap

Update: We reached out to Tonne Goodman, literally on the eve of her book launch at Bookmarc, to ask if she still uses these tear-off napkins, and she responded thus: “Guess what I just did? Ordered my napkins-on-a-roll! I need them for tonight …”

Merci is a boutique in Paris, run by the owners of Bonpoint, where a portion of the profits go to charity, and it is just this perfect, eclectic general store — they sell everything from clothing to furniture to stationery to kitchenware. It’s where I first discovered MyDrap napkins: the simplest solution to the tedious task of serving hors d’oeuvre, and which I recently stocked up on, as they are indispensable during the holidays.

MyDrap makes linen cocktail napkins (as well as dinner napkins and place mats) on a roll, pulled off as if they were paper towels (or toilet paper). Instead of having a stack of napkins that needs to be spread out in an attractive fashion and then wrestled with to gingerly pick just one, you just simply tear each napkin off. The colors are elegant: I have an essentially black-and-white house, so I tend to go for the black ones. But the navy and red are excellent; an ink-navy and a blood-red are distinctive and chic. They are washable for a few goes. And because they are novel, they broke the ice at a holiday dinner I gave with frosty, unexpected European guests who were quite chilly and needed a distracting thaw!

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