10 Courses, 10 Films, 38 Guests: The 2026 Oscars Dinner Party
An extensive recap of my cinematic feast, from Brazilian cheese bread to a redwood-inspired cake, with plenty of caviar bumps in between.
The clocks sprung forward by an hour on Sunday, marking the end of a miserable season. I refer, of course, to awards season. It also happened to be the day I wrapped up this year’s edition of my Oscars dinner.
To celebrate the 98th Academy Awards, I created a menu where each of the ten Best Picture nominees received a thematic food pairing. I’ve done this for five years and counting, and it’s always the biggest event I host. The hours spent brainstorming, budgeting, prepping, and serving this culinary celebration of cinema is a lot of work, but it’s always worth it when I get to the end of the night and I see the looks of satisfaction on my guests.
And it’s so nice, I did it thrice! I usually do two dinners but this year I did a third Encore service. There were 38 guests in total.
Before diving in, I want to give a big thanks to the team that made this event possible. Aaron was by my side for all three nights as sous chef. Eric, Aeron, and Olivia each served as service assistants for a night. They kept the dishes clean and ensured plating was pretty. Byron and Aaron devised the non-traditional wine pairings. Desserts were made by Dan and Karen. None of this happens without them.
Almost all photography by Amy Guo! Check out her website or Instagram.
Cocktail Hour
The evening began with a cocktail reception, where we served two specially crafted drinks. Aaron came up with the Carnaval do Marcelo to go with The Secret Agent: a black tea-infused whiskey sour sweetened with hot honey and guava. That was a huge hit, as was a fizzy French 75 riff in honor of One Battle After Another. It used St. George Terroir Gin, with strong fir and fennel notes reminiscent of a redwood forest. We called it the California 75.
Those wanting something simpler could opt for a few small beers.
While guests sipped their drinks and shared their movie takes, I passed around the first dish of the night!
Pão de Queijo (The Secret Agent)
Fermented manioc starch. Minas cheese. Guava paste.
Brazil’s famous cheese bread was a natural fit for this film, which has similarly become the pride of a nation. Inspired by John Carlo’s pan de bono from a previous dinner collaboration, I placed a cube of goiabada inside each bun. We also passed around Romeu e Julieta skewers.
I followed Sohla El-Waylly’s recipe in Serious Eats, but used real-deal Brazilian ingredients purchased from the aptly-named Brazilian Market NYC.
Champagne & Caviar (F1)
Osetra Classic. Buckwheat blini. Crème fraîche.
On the morning that the Oscar nominees were announced, three different people texted to ask what I would do about F1. It wasn’t obvious at first, but I then thought of Kate Wagner’s infamous exposé about the wealth and power embedded in this sport.
Why not, for a moment, pretend we are oligarchs too?
I have to give special thanks to the Great Blizzard of ‘26, because the caviar vendor I had in mind did a one-day flash sale: 50% off anything and everything. Shoutout to Number One Caviar for this insane deal.
Originally I was going to serve 125 grams at each dinner, enough to give each person a couple blini. But now that my caviar budget (lol) was worth twice as much, I had to decide between upgrading the quality or doubling the quantity.
You can guess what I chose…
Wine pairings:
Ferrari Trento F1 - ® Limited Edition ‘Miami’
The winemaker has no relation to the car brand, but for a few years this was the official sparkling wine of F1. (It is once again Moët.) Being made in Italy, it is not champagne, but alliteration outweighed accuracy and the branded bottle was fun to pass around. The bubbly was a little sweet and honestly not the best pairing with caviar. But again, branding!
Delacroix, Brut Blanc des Blancs
This is my go-to sparkler. Dry, crisp, and it’s only $12 a pop.
Okonomi-Latke (Marty Supreme)
Potato hash. Cabbage. Bean sprouts. Ikura. Bonito flakes.
Like the actor who plays him, Marty Mauser is a Jewish kid from Manhattan. He wants to be the best ping pong—sorry, table tennis—player in the world. He’ll do whatever it takes to get to Tokyo, where his biggest nemesis awaits. Inspired by this cross-cultural connection, I looked up the menu at Shalom Japan, a Jewish-Japanese fusion restaurant in Williamsburg. Their okonomi-latke is an occasional special, and the recipe was published in the Times which was rather convenient. (I have a lot of notes because the recipe wasn’t tested well, as the comments pointed out1.) That the ikura resembles the now-iconic orange ping pong balls in the film was merely a bonus.
A critic friend gave me a few dozen official Marty Supreme™ ping pong balls, so I gave them out as a party favor.
Wine pairing:
Orange Pét-Nat, Vinha da Malhada - 2023
Gotta match the color of the movie’s marketing! Slightly acidic and decently aromatic, it was a good transition from the sparkling white wine from the prior course and meshed well with this fried cabbage and potato pancake.
Smørbrød (Sentimental Value)
Rugbrød. Acme Royal Cut Smoked Salmon. Pickled ramps.
A refined Norwegian film deserves an equally refined Norwegian dish. I baked a loaf of authentically dense rye bread, with each slice smeared (smørred) with butter and topped with Acme’s smoked salmon (shoutout to Fish Friday!), cucumber, pickled ramps, lemon zest, and dill.
Wine pairing:
I’m a big fan of what James Jelks is doing at his winery2. His spin on the archetypal Alsatian blend was a punchy counterpoint to the earthy rugbrød, with a brightness that matched well with the citrus and pickle flavors.
Fried Catfish (Sinners)
With braised collards, hot sauce, black garlic aioli.
Although the planning doesn’t happen until the weeks leading up to the dinner, brainstorming is a yearlong concern. Every time I watch a movie I take note of any prominent food or drink scenes, just in case they emerge as an Oscar contender. Smoke and Stack serve fried catfish at their juke joint opening, so the choice for the Sinners dish was obvious.
Each piece of fish was dipped in buttermilk laced with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco (crucially, it was not marinated!), breaded in cornmeal, then fried in a cast iron pan. Collards were stewed with a generous amount of smoked ham hocks, and to ward off the vampires, I made a black garlic aioli to be used as a dip.
Big ups to Aaron for holding down on the fish fry! I turned this course over to him and he knocked it out of the park.
Wine pairing:
Partida Creus VN Vinel-Lo - 2022
A chilled light red blend, showcasing trepat, a grape native to Catalunya. The producers are an Italian couple who set up shop in Pendès. This kind of viticultural immigration is rather, well, foreign but the product speaks for itself. This wine was by far the crowd favorite.
Carne Asada Taco (One Battle After Another)
With avocado, radish, salsa verde. Charred scallion and lime on the side, obviously.
Another easy choice. Like the film, this course is a tribute to California’s dusty border towns and arid Central Valley highways. Bavette and/or flank steaks (depending on what the butcher had each week) were marinated for roughly six hours before searing to medium doneness. (Less cooked and it’s too chewy, which we learned the hard way on the first night.) This was the toughest course to execute: while the steak cooks, I’m warming up the tortillas. Meanwhile my sous and assistant are setting up all the toppings so that we can quickly assemble a dozen tacos at the same time.
California Mexican cuisine usually favors flour tortillas, ideally made with lard. The problem is that it’s exceptionally hard to get such tortillas in these parts. I tried making some from scratch and my test batch didn’t work out at all. While I’m pretty good at getting up to speed on new techniques, I didn’t think I could master this in one week so I went with store-bought corn tortillas, which are more reliable to work with.
This choice of grain was the only compromise. I’m especially impressed with how the carne asada turned out; the recipe I linked above is a keeper.
Wine pairings: These Mexican reds come from Baja California, a wine region close to the border.
Funky, acidic, and smoky. We were concerned it would be a little too out there but people went nuts for it. Listán Negro is quickly becoming one of my favorite grapes.
L.A. Cetto, Petite Sirah 2022 & Casa Jipi, Nebbiolo 2023
There was a bit of a break between the tacos and the next course, a prime opportunity to open a second bottle. (Each night got one of these two options.) Both are lighter than the Listán Negro, perfect for sipping while the flavors of the carne asada lingered. The Nebbiolo was an especially big hit.
Mushrooms & Maple Glazed Vegetables (Hamnet)
Mushroom medley. Carrots. Cabbage.
Took inspiration from Agnes’s forest witch vibes.
A mix of fungi, including maitake (aka hen of the woods) and foraged hedgehog and yellowfoot chanterelles, were sautéed in ghee3 and served alongside carrots and cabbages roasted with a maple (ham) glaze.
During this course, guests mused on the nature of daylight and argued the virtues (or lack thereof) of Chloé Zhao’s film. It got especially spicy during the Encore dinner.
Turduckenstein (Frankenstein)
With Cumberland sauce.
That’s right—three different birds, pieced together to form the perfect poultry. Half a duck, half a chicken, turkey wings, with heart and gizzards tucked underneath. The turkey and chicken parts were roasted, while the duck breast was seared and duck leg confited. Head and feet were essential for presentation, so I went to Chinatown for some meat shopping. The duck I got wasn’t eviscerated, and it was my first time encountering this. It was fun to pull out the entrails and maybe I should have saved them for display.
In a nod to the novel’s 19th century English origins, the Turduckenstein was served with Cumberland sauce, which is made from red currant jelly, ruby port, and citrus. It also happens to look like blood. Though this sweet, glazey sauce is typically served with Christmas ham, it worked wonders with the poultry, especially when set against crunchy and spicy mustard microgreens from Farm One.
Wine pairing:
A delightfully sanguineous bottle to round out the night’s wine pairings. A mix of Zinfandel, Cab Franc, and Cab Sauv from Washington’s Columbia Valley. Fortunately it was an elegant blend, not a Frankensteined one! The label evokes the eras of both Shakespeare and Mary Shelley.
One Caviar Bump After Another
“Guys, we have too much caviar.” Something had to be done.
Before transitioning from savory to sweet, we all got a big hit of buttery brine.
As I quenelled the glistening Osetra onto the back of everyone’s hands, one person remarked, with some horror, that they felt like the bad guys in a movie!
Folks were rather shy about receiving so much caviar during the first dinner. (No complaints from me, as that meant more for me and the staff!) But everyone at the Encore dinner was quite ravenous. I had an entire 500G tin to go around for that one4.
Sadly, next year’s dinner will not offer such massive amounts of caviar, unless another massive blizzard strikes or a caviar purveyor sponsors me (please).
From here on out, service was smooth sailing because the desserts needed zero preparation. Like any good head chef, I outsourced the sweets to trusted friends.
Beehive Ice Cream (Bugonia)
Crafted by Dan Schindel. Andrew’s Buckwheat Honey. Honeycomb Toffee. Honeycomb.
Jesse Plemons is an amateur beekeeper whose concerns with colony collapse disorder and impending ecological disaster launch him into a rabbit hole of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. Yorgos Lanthimos may be adapting a two-decade-old Korean film, but it speaks to our current moment of disinformation and societal mistrust. One thing is certain: if humanity suddenly vanished from this earth, the bees would do just fine.
Friend and fellow critic Dan Schindel makes ice cream in his spare time, so I enlisted him for this Bugonia pairing. Inspired by David Lebovitz, the custard included a local buckwheat honey from Andrew’s Honey (a delightful coincidence that the apiarist and I share a name) and honeycomb toffee was mixed in.
Each dessert coupe was graced with a piece of honeycomb and a dazzle of Maldon flakes, necessary to counter the sweetness.
Bûche de Joël (Train Dreams)
Crafted by Karen Yang. Chocolate chiffon. Cherry. Mascarpone. Pistachio cream. Chocolate ganache frosting. Meringue mushrooms.
The protagonist of Train Dreams is a logger played by Joel Edgerton. So the name of this cake is a pun5, but it also evokes the forests of Eastern Washington, where the film was shot.
I was lowkey banking on Wicked to be nominated again so I could reprise the amazing pink & green cake made by friend and pastry extraordinaire Karen Yang, but I was glad I was able to relate one of these Best Picture nominees to a cake. And it was so, so good.
Unfortunately she wasn’t available to make a third cake for the Encore, so for that night I made a chocolate hazelnut tart with a graham cracker crust, topped with candied Japanese citrus peels. It’s like a Ferrero Rocher in pie form. While not as special as the bûche, it was just as decadent.
Amaro service: Carried on with the piney forest vibes with the digestifs, offering up a variety of amari and one whiskey. Matchbook Distilling’s Day Trip Strawberry Amaro is a perennial favorite, especially for those who shy away from astringent bottles like Faccia Brutto’s Amaro Alpino. When I was at Astor I encountered a bourbon called Redwood Empire Pipe Dream. I had to get it on account of the name; as a bonus it’s a pretty good whiskey!
Some Reflections
Last year I served 21 people, spread over two nights, and it was the best dinner yet. I thought then that I had stretched the capabilities of what could be done in a New York City apartment, but this time I pushed the envelope even further. This menu was the most technically complex I’ve ever executed. The okonomi-latke proved to be more finicky than anticipated, three courses in a row were a chain of à la minute cooking, and it was only on the third try that timing the vegetables and chicken roasts worked out.
Each service had its own distinct atmosphere. Our first night had a frenetic “let’s put on a show” energy, but there were longer gaps between courses than I would have liked. The next day was much smoother, since most of the prep work from Saturday was carried over. Usually this night is pretty chill but this mix of guests was equally game to drink! Sunday was also the one dinner that we followed up with karaoke. (Naturally, I kicked it off with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”)
Then there was the Encore dinner, held a week later. Since this was our third go at it, we were a lot more comfortable. But expectations were certainly higher, with everyone having seen pictures from the first weekend. And I had never met about half of the people at the table this time around, which made me a bit nervous. Thankfully everything ran smoothly, and this group had the spiciest movie conversations! There were passionate Hamnet defenders and staunch One Battle After Another detractors.
Although I couldn’t participate in most of the discussions, it was edifying to listen in. Film discourse is plainly on the decline, especially on the internet. Perhaps the solution is to rebuild it in a more intimate setting, in person and offline. The dinner table is a fine place to start.
You may be wondering about the price of this Oscars dinner. Each ticket was $98, plus $35 for the largely at-cost wine pairing. I try really hard to keep the prices as low as possible while maintaining a decent margin, though the compensation wasn’t quite commensurate with the time investment by myself and the staff. There’s a delicate balance because if I charge more, that makes it less accessible and comes with higher expectations with both pacing and plating.
And while I’d love to host these Oscars dinners in a commercial space or partner with a restaurant, that costs associated would be prohibitive. I would need sponsorships to grow this thing beyond my apartment. (Which I am definitely open to… I’m just really bad at getting the word out… so if you want to sponsor/collaborate on any of my future dinner events, get in touch!)
Any Questions?
This was a pretty exhaustive/exhausting recap, but feel free to ask me anything about this dinner!
To improve your okonomi-latke experience: if you grate four Russet potatoes as suggested you end up with twice the ideal amount. You want one packed quart (pre-blanched) of the grated potatoes, about the same volume of cabbage. I don’t know why that isn’t written in the recipe. You’ll want to keep each latke a quarter-inch thin at most—the recipe easily makes about ten—and it takes a really long time to achieve decent browning.
Cooking mushrooms in ghee gets you butter flavor without the risk of burnt milk solids. Try it.
At the time I made the caviar purchase I was considering having four dinners, but after finishing the second one I realized that while I had it in me to host this a third time, a fourth would have been overkill. This meant the Encore folks got a double heaping!
One that came to me while in the shower, where many of us do our best thinking.
This looked AMAZING and I'm so sad I wasn't able to make it this year. I'm manifesting some sponsors for you next year because besides optimism and dishwashing I don't have much to offer.