Just like the fashion, the food at the Met Gala is always on theme. Some examples? At the 2023’s “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”, guests were served Diet Coke—the preferred beverage of the late Chanel creative director. In 2019, the beef at dinner came with bright beet horseradish crema and an array of rainbow carrots, as a playful pink nod to “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”
For the 2024 Met Gala, “Sleeping Beauty: Reawakening Fashion” caterer Olivier Cheng dreamt up several dishes he believed were worthy of a children’s storybook. “We wanted to create a menu that felt a bit romantic and ethereal, yet focused on the best seasonal ingredients,” he tells Vogue. “Drawing on inspiration from the lush gardens and palaces of Sleeping Beauty’s fantasy world, we really aimed to build our own bite-sized fairytale.”
The first dish served? A spring vegetable salad with elderflower foam, raspberry vinaigrette, and olive crumble that resembles soil, complete with butterfly-shaped croutons. (Cheng says he found inspiration in Aurora’s “reawakening” after 100 years of deep sleep—picking early spring vegetables that are the first to grow after a long winter.)
The main course, meanwhile, is a filet of beef topped with a tortellini rose. Cheng hopes it resembles a culinary castle: “We’re floating the beef on a pine needle and mushroom ‘moat,’” he says. The floral accent is a nod to the exhibit itself, which features over 270 nature-inspired pieces. One of them? An upside-down rose hat by Philip Treacy. The milliner’s moody design from 2000 has served as an emblem for this year’s event, appearing on everything from the invitation to the decor, to even the napkins. (“We saw it and thought it was perfect for ‘Sleeping Beauty’ because it conjures the romance that we’re looking for, but there's a lot of rich detail to it,” Eaddy Kiernan, Vogue’s contributing editor who oversees the planning of the Met Gala, says of the hat.) Event producer Raúl Àvila adorned the tables with burgundy Treacy-inspired roses that he describes as “almost black.” Also on the table? English ivy, candelabras, and lettuce plates.
As for dessert? A not-so-poison apple—a flavorful nod to the famous fairytale point in Snow White. “We start with an almond cremeux molded into the shape of a miniature apple, blanketed that with a bright red mirror glaze, and finish by placing it on a walnut-flavored ‘leaf.’”
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