On Sunday March 15, the world's A-List descended on Hollywood for the 98th Academy Awards.
And while most attention was on the the dresses, the drama, and the decoration (after one of the most hotly contested award build ups, One Battle After Another clinched Sinners to the top spot and was awarded Best Picture), for around 200 chefs, the biggest focus of the night was the food. Once the coveted statues had been handed out, attendees ascended the stairs to the Grosvenor Ball for their meal. “You can hear them coming and you know it’s go-time,” chef Elliott Grover said.
This was the fourth year running that the head chef at London’s carnivorous Cut at 45 Park Lane (sister to The Dorchester hotel just over the road) was entrusted with cooking for the entertainment industry’s most prestigious awards show. Still though, he works under the lead of Austrian-American chef to the stars, Wolfgang Puck, who has led the menu for the Grosvenor Ball (otherwise known as the official Oscars afterparty) since 1994. “He is very fun,” says Grover, “but he’s crazy, so I go in with the mental preparation of knowing something will change.”
But, less than a week before the Oscars 2026, Grover still didn’t know what he would be feeding the stars. “Wolfgang [Puck] changes things last minute all the time,” he told Elite Traveler. Fish and chips was already confirmed, but it wasn’t until a couple of days before the main event that Puck gave the green light on roast beef in Yorkshire puddings. “We get slammed on the fish and chips – and thankfully it’s the easiest thing to make,” he says.
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More a canape-style snack than the greasy, newspaper-wrapped seaside staple of Britain, Grover’s Oscar’s fish and chips is a mere handful of chips, with a delicate goujon of fish and a dollop of tartare sauce. “In an ideal world, we’d use haddock, skin-on, but for a couple of years, we’ve used seabass, skin-on,” Grover says. “It all depends on what’s best in LA at the time.”
While Grover’s inaugural year intentionally skipped red meat (“they know their steak over there … I want to put British food on the map,” he stated at the time), in 2024, he served a delicate slice of Wagyu in a classic Yorkshire pudding, and in 2025, the team took on the notoriously tricky beef Wellington. “It was our biggest challenge so far – I was worried I’d miscalculated the timing,” he says.
I spoke to Grover almost three years ago to the day ahead of his first Oscars, and back then, bold tenacity was the main thing that got him the job. “I asked if I could go along and Wolfgang said ‘Yes, why not?’” he said in 2023. Fast forward to 2026, and it’s a given that the London-born chef is on the line up. “I just keep going along,” he shrugs.
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The years have instilled a sense of calm. “I was so nervous back then. I was in the kitchen days ahead of time trying to prepare. It’s no stress for me whatsoever anymore.” Instead of a prepped, organized approach, Grover is heading to the kitchen for the first time just two days before the ceremony, without a plan. “I’ll find everything out tomorrow morning,” he says. “I’m gonna enjoy it and that’s it – there’s no point worrying about it.”
Surprisingly, given the calibre of guests, off-menu requests are rare. “The most common thing we’re asked for is just chips,” Grover says. “That’s easy.” While in previous years Grover has run his Oscars menu for a limited time at Cut restaurant, this year the only people who get to taste it are those invited to the 98th Academy Awards.
The Oscar’s menu 2026 in numbers
- Number of guests served: approx. 1,200
- Number of chefs in the kitchen: 200
- Number of Yorkshire puddings: 1,000
- Approximate time spent preparing: 4 days
- Hours in the kitchen on the day: 16
- Estimated number of kitchen meltdowns: a few!
