81-96 A.D.: Ancient Greeks believed that lettuce induced sleep, so they served it at the end of the meal. The Romans continued the custom, but Emperor Domitian (A.D. 81-96) served it at the beginning of his feasts, so he could torture his guests by forcing them to stay awake in his presence.
1274: For his coronation, King Edward I of England ordered his sheriffs to provide 278 bacon hogs, 450 porkers, 440 fat oxen, 430 sheep, and 22,600 hens and capons.
1464: When George Neville was made Archbishop of York, he celebrated with “300 huge loaves of bread, 300 tuns of ale (about 75,000 gallons), 100 tuns of wine, 105 oxen, six wild bulls, 1,000 sheep, 304 pigs, 304 calves and 400 swans.”
1556-1605: Moghul Emperor Akbar the Great required his chickens to be fed pistachios for six to eight weeks before a banquet, to flavor the meat.
1605: “The first thing that met Sancho’s eyes was a whole ox spitted on the trunk of an elm and, in the hearth over which it was to roast, there was a fair mountain of wood burning. Six earthen pots were arranged around this blaze. … Whole sheep disappeared within them as if they were pigeons. Innumerable skinned hares and fully plucked chickens, hanging on the trees, were soon to be swallowed up in these pots. … Cheeses, built up like bricks, formed walls and two cauldrons of oil … were used for frying pastries, which were lifted out with two sturdy shovels and then plunged into another cauldron of honey standing nearby.”
– Miguel de Cervantes’ description of farmer Sancho Camacho’s wedding feast in “Don Quixote”
July 14, 1889 and Sept. 22, 1900: All the mayors of France celebrated the 100th anniversay of the storming of the Bastille at the Palace of Industry in Paris. In the Tuileries gardens, 22,295 mayors did it again at the beginning of the 20th century with a menu of beef, Rouen duck loaf, chicken from Bresse and ballottine of pheasant. Waiters covered the 4 miles of tables on bicycle.
Nov. 10, 1975: The meal that inspired Opus chef Michael Long: When New York Times critic Craig Claiborne and his pal cookbook author Pierre Franey won a meal for two anywhere in the world, they chose Chez Denis in Paris, where chef Claude Mornay orchestrated a five-hour, 31-course dinner that included foie gras, woodcock, lobster, caviar, a 1918 Chateau Latour, a 1928 Mouton Rothschild and glazed charlotte with strawberries that cost sponsor American Express $4,000. Claiborne gave it a mixed review on the front page of The Times, and Pope Paul VI scolded him for gluttony.
May 11, 2006: Members of the Explorers Club and The Post’s own John Henderson gathered at The Brown Palace Hotel for a meal featuring scorpions with sun-dried-tomato cream cheese and endives, prairie dandelion sautéed in pine nut butter, North American cricket with prickly pear cactus jelly, rosemary rattlesnake cakes, yucca root and flower pancakes with wild chokecherry dipping sauce, black currant and roasted ant tarts, and tarantula: “crispy and bland and totally disgusting to think about,” wrote Henderson.
Jan. 27, 2007: The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs hosted its fifth annual Salute to Escoffier, a five- course buffet featuring more than 100 dishes in honor of the father of French cuisine.
Feb. 10, 2007: Six chefs, 10 courses, ingredients from 35 countries, 40 diners, 1 million-baht/$25,000 per person. “The Epicurean Masters of the World” at the Dome Restaurant in Bangkok’s Lebua Hotel included “tartar of Kobe beef with Imperial Beluga caviar and Belon oysters,” “mousseline of ‘pattes rouges’ crayfish with morel mushroom infusion,” “crème brûlée of foie gras with Tonga beans” and coqille Saint-Jacques with 3 1/2 ounces of shaved perigord truffles worth about $350 per serving.
– Kristen Browning-Blas
Sources: The Associated Press; ; ; The Independent (London)
