98th Academy Awards Dinner Menu
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Welcome to the Château Fatale! If you are looking for a dinner to serve this Sunday night that spotlights all ten Best Picture nominees from this year’s Academy Awards, you have come to the right place. This menu has been a yearly tradition here on Films Fatale since we first started seven years ago. I look forward to this annual experiment, and I hope that you do too as well.
If you are familiar with this practice in the past (one that we didn’t invent but certainly partake in), you may be wondering why things feel a bit different this time of year. All of the other iterations of the Best Picture menu were curated by our dear friend archivist Carol Hopp, who was unable to create a menu this year. You can find her past menus here: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. We thank Carol for her past menus and hope to celebrate again this time next year!
I want to keep her creativity and tradition alive, especially since the concept of a Best Picture-themed dinner is beyond popular now with many Oscars fiends like yours truly; why would I not want to give this a bash? I have tried making my own menu once in the past but have put a lot of effort into making a fully functioning meal this time around; each menu item will hopefully work together and/or will provide numerous options for all party guests. I’m not a chef by trade and do not know how well everything will gel together, but you can let me know via positive (and hopefully not negative) feedback if you tried this menu out. Enjoy!
The drinks are selected by what I feel like the three different types of Best Picture demographics there are; essentially, I want there to be a drink that can last you the evening, while that potential winner is in the back of your mind all night as you dine. Here’s a poison for the Oscars obsessives: those who have wanted Paul Thomas Anderson to win for decades. He may do just that with One Battle After Another. What better way to wait for the big reveal than to guzzle down a few small beers, as it has become a viral moment. If you do not drink alcohol, imagine any fizzy canned drink as your version of Sensei Sergio’s beverage. Please drink responsibly, and certainly do not drive while inebriated.
Here’s a drink for the movie goers who might be tuning in just for a specific film: Sinners. Seeing as a majority of the film takes place over one night, I say give in to temptation and indulge in those vampiric urges. Serve up a vampiro cocktail to enjoy all evening, and feel that blood course through your veins. Just be careful about waking up for work the next day (you wouldn’t want to go outside into the sun as a vampire, would you?). For those of you who do not want to have alcohol, you can simply have some cranberry juice.
Finally, there are the good old fashioned blockbuster fans who want action, special effects, and noise. I figure that a bottle of champagne to represent F1 makes perfect sense, even if the racing film doesn’t take home the big prize. For those of you who are not into the film, some champagne would be great to celebrate whoever wins Best Picture at the very end. I am not telling you to spray champagne all over your place, because I do not want to claim responsibility for whatever you may do.
Moving on to appetizers, I’m suggesting hard boiled eggs in honour of Hamnet. A scene that has always stuck out in my mind since I first watched Chloé Zhao’s opus is the one where Agnes Shakespeare is peeling eggs all to herself before she and husband William have a major, grief-stricken confrontation. The eggs feel quite fitting, since they symbolize life: a major theme of the film (alongside death). Feel free to just have one egg and not go overboard if you do not want to overeat this early into the night.
I do not recall any specific food-based moments in Sentimental Value that stood out to me quite like some of these other examples, so I decided to get a little creative with this one. Considering the Norwegian roots of this film, I think that the inclusion of some nice salmon would suffice. Incorporate the salmon any way you see fit, including a simple salmon platter, lox, bruschetta, and the like.
We now have two types of snacks: the healthy, and the not-so healthy. Let’s start off green. Do not order the expensive dishes that Marty Mauser never paid off in Marty Supreme. Instead, try a bowl of fruit; think of the scene where Marty is trying to attract Kay Stone over the phone and asks her to watch him do a trick. He tosses a fruit into a bowl from across the room, showcasing his accuracy. If you want this menu item to feel even more fitting, grab a fat orange or a group of small clementines or tangerines (you know, to look like Marty’s signature orange ping pong ball).
Here’s one for us sugar nuts who want to nibble on something throughout the ceremony. Who could forget the shark sequence in The Secret Agent? It felt like it came from a different reality. Well, I’d like to relish in that surreal, strange scene with a cup of gummy sharks for all to enjoy. Just as long as there aren’t any gummy human limbs to go along with this treat, right?
My selected main course does not exist in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, but I decided to get creative here. If Frankenstein features the creation of life via the assembly of numerous body parts and limbs, would it not feel fitting to make turducken as your main course — seeing as it is the converging of turkey, duck, and chicken? You may want to get started on this since it is a lengthy process; hopefully the rest of this Oscars menu will be far quicker to toss together.
We have two desserts to conclude the evening with. First off, there are honey tarts for Bugonia. With the major theme of bees and apiaries throughout the film, it only makes sense to have something that can remind us of our buzzing friends; furthermore, considering that the bees will remain after us (potentially), why not end the evening with honey?
Finally, we have our second dessert: the rich inclusion of a nice black forest gateau, courtesy of Train Dreams. There isn’t much of a connection here, outside of the film’s constant existence within the deep woods (and the desert’s connection, allegedly, to the Black Forest in Germany). Don’t eat this dessert too late into the evening, or else you may be having train nightmares.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.