Summer entertaining has a ring of barefoot elegance — lunch by the pool, drinks on the terrace, dinner on the deck. And when New Yorkers decamp to places with more space and larger kitchens, there are more opportunities for having people over.

But when it comes to entertaining in the city, the situation is bleak, almost to the point of rudeness. Dinner parties in which the meal is prepared by the host or hostess — not a caterer — are a rarity in New York. When dinners are cooked and shared, they tend to be at the homes of those with foreign passports. If the invitation is reciprocated at all, it’s typically in a restaurant. But while taking your friends out for dinner can be an act of generosity, it’s also commonplace. All the white tablecloths in Manhattan can’t disguise the fact that the greatest culinary luxury is dinner at home.

For some city dwellers, the decision to bow out of entertaining results from space and logistics, according to Gourmet magazine’s Zanne Stewart, a food editor who lived in New York for 35 years. “In order to entertain in the city, you don’t just need great recipes, you need a choreographer,” she said. “How many people you can fit in your apartment? Where are you going to put them? Where are you going to put the food?”

And the anxiety of comparison also dampens the urge to entertain. “Everyone has real estate envy. They’re positive that they live in a dungeon, and you live in a castle,” Ms. Stewart said.

But Europeans living in New York don’t seem to mind — and they carry it off quite easily.

“It’s much more of a habit to cook at home when you’re European. Everybody sits around the kitchen and helps,” the caterer and author Serena Bass said. “The idea of entertaining is such a bugabear here. They think it has to be perfect.”

As a caterer, Ms. Bass, who grew up in London and moved to New York in 1977, puts together lavish dinner parties for her clients. When she entertains her friends, she uses the same army of assistants, which she suspects has an adverse effect on the invitations that come to her.

“Unfortunately, because I operate at such a high level of entertaining, there are very few invitations back,” she said. “I’m afraid I do intimidate people. Maybe they are having people over, but they’re not inviting me!”

Maybe, but people who host dinners on a small scale also share that same anxiety. “You have these dinners and do it the European way, and then you never get the invite in return. It’s really looked down upon in Europe,” the new media and music creator Nima Abbasi said.

Mr. Abbasi — born in Iran, raised in England, and educated in Holland, where he met his French wife — puts it down to cultural, not personal, idiosyncrasies. “Space has a lot to do with it, but the food culture is lacking here,” he said. “The idea of putting together a three-course meal, it’s just not in their psyche. They just haven’t been brought up with it. Even the people who really try, they’ve got 25 cookbooks open.”

Which raises the question: With the rise in popularity of food television, the deluge of cookbooks, and the availability of cookware, why can’t anyone cook? Are all those Viking stoves and Sub-Zero refrigerators just collecting dust?

Ms. Stewart approaches this question in a different way: “If no one is cooking, why is Fairway so crowded? The bulk of what is sold at Fairway is not prepared food,” she points out.

In her view, the level of conversation and curiosity about food has increased. When walking through a supermarket or farmers market, she finds that strangers frequently look at what she’s picking up and ask about how she’s going to cook it. “Some one will say, ‘What do you do with that?’ If it’s something slightly unusual, people will ask,” she said.

While interest in cooking is on the rise, the ability and confidence to cook well enough to entertain is the next step. “Americans haven’t yet learned how to stylishly cut corners. The French don’t do a first course — they use charcuterie. The dessert is from the bakery, and they never apologize about that,” Ms. Stewart said. “There is something almost Puritanical about the American view point that if you haven’t really sweated over this, you’re not honoring your guests.”

Of course, there is option of having someone else — a caterer or a personal chefs — sweat over the details for you when the thought of going out to a restaurant becomes overwhelming, as it is increasingly a battle against inflated prices, snobby service, and deafening music. According to the founder of the chef-placement firm Kitchen Maestro, Alfred Ehrlich, what the people who hire private chefs value most is the ability to circumvent the crowds. They “can also afford to go out, but they like to entertain on nights when there are hoards of people out and it’s amateur night,” he said. “The wealthier people go back to their oasis, and they have everybody over.”

After all, the most exclusive eatery in town is your home — where you determine the guest list.

pcatton@nysun.com