The Met Gala has banned 3 foods from its menu — here’s why Anna Wintour is not ‘fond’ of them
Florals for spring may be groundbreaking, but some flowering plants are not.
On Monday, the Met Gala 2024 celebrated the debut of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” with the theme “Garden of Time.”
But Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour recently revealed — somewhat ironically this year, considering the theme — that a trio of flowering plants is banned from the Met Gala menu: garlic, onion and chives.
“Those are three things I’m not particularly fond of,” the 74-year-old fashion guru, who has been overseeing the event since she became co-chair in 1995, told Jenna Bush Hager on “The Today Show.”
Wintour’s well-manicured thumb is on every single aspect of the event, from the hand-selected guest list to the food served inside at a seated dinner, the latter a part of the inside celebration that fans don’t get to see.
Josh Jackson, executive chef/owner proprietor of Great Taste Catering in Los Angeles, speculated that it’s a personal choice for Wintour to ban certain foods.
“She doesn’t want the food to affect the breath of the celebrity guests. Also, there are several people that are actually allergic to the allium family of bulbous plants, which is rare but possible,” Jackson told Parade. Alliums include the three previously mentioned plants, as well as shallots, leeks and scallions.
“But that’s maybe a stretch,” Jackson continued. “The real reason must be she doesn’t want to see chives in the guests’ teeth. It’s understandable.”
No garlic breath on the red carpet for these A-listers!
Wintour also has a longtime ban on parsley — because it can easily get stuck in your teeth — as well as bruschetta because it’s messy and can ruin someone’s outfit.
This year’s super-secret menu by caterer Olivier Cheng was created to make the meal “a bit romantic and ethereal, yet focused on the best seasonal ingredients,” he told 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.”
Among the menu items, as revealed by Vogue:
- A spring vegetable salad with elderflower foam, raspberry vinaigrette and olive crumble was the first course and was meant to resemble soil and adorned with garden-worthy butterfly-shaped croutons.
- The main event was a filet of beef christened with a tortellini rose; the presentation involved “floating the beef on a pine needle and mushroom ‘moat,’” Cheng revealed.
- As for dessert, it was a “not-so-poison apple — a flavorful nod to the famous fairytale point in ‘Snow White,'” Vogue reported. It included 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,’” Chen proudly declared.
This year’s Met Gala co-hosts were Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth.
