The winner of the Masters Tournament receives a green jacket, an elegantly engraved trophy and a lifetime invitation to one of professional golf's most revered events.
He also has the chance to plan a dinner for other Masters winners next spring (and receive a check for one of the most exclusive nights in sports).
“How unusual is it to have all of us together in a room all to ourselves?'' Scotty Scheffler said, along with 32 fellow Masters champions and Fred S., chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, the tournament venue. I spoke to Mr. Ridley a few hours before a dinner last year.
“There is no one else,” Scheffler continued. “There's the president, and then there's us.”
And in tournaments where concessions are legendary, the pressure is forever on the new champion to choose the right menu for the moment. After Tiger Woods won his first Masters in 1997, he served cheeseburgers and milkshakes, but over the years the menu has evolved to include sushi, porterhouse steak, and chocolate truffle cake. Sandy Lyle supported Haggis after his 1988 victory. Vijay Singh's choice of Thai cuisine excited some players and surprised others.
When 2023 winner Jon Rahm showed up for dinner Tuesday night, he prepared six dishes, including “Mama Rahm's Classic Lentil Stew,” a recipe passed down from Rahm's grandmother. We will sit down to a meal that begins with tapas and pintxos. Then, choose from Basque crab salad, ribeye steak or turbot, and enjoy a dessert of milhojas de crema y nata. — It was essentially a lamb wedding cake, a puff pastry cake with Chantilly cream and custard.
Spanish-born chef Jose Andrés helps Spanish-born golfers grow menu.
“My grandmother called me for the recipe,” Rahm said last month of the lentil stew. “If you don't like it, don't tell anyone. Actually, don't tell anyone. It means a little too much to me to hear it.”
“I wanted to incorporate a little bit of my and my family's traditions into this dinner, which would make it even more special,” he added. “I would love to do it again, but I wanted to make sure the Basque tradition was there.”
The night wasn't always so special. For many years, the menu included only steak, baked potatoes, and bottomless wine, a menu that reflected the habits, homogeneity, and less daring nature of many professional golfers. After Tommy Aaron won the tournament in 1973, he recalled in a 2020 interview that he called Augusta National officials to inquire about the menu and learned that the outbreak was fairly predictable. . He decided to offer a beef dish, lobster bisque, and crabmeat salad.
“After dinner, some of the guys said, 'It's nice to have something different than strip steak,'” Aaron recalls, adding that he would forever order what Champion had planned instead of the cop entree. did.
Scheffler recalled brainstorming the menu with his wife and agent. They started with a basic premise – Scheffler's favorite food – and began narrowing the list from there. After consulting with Augusta National's chefs, they settled on a menu that, in the golfer's words, “would never have been on a nutritionist's plan.”
Last April, when Augusta National allowed The New York Times into its kitchen, a team of chefs was preparing perhaps the most scrutinized meal of the year, with customized and timely There were dozens of dishes that needed to be measured and heated.
We had an appetizer of cheeseburger sliders, firecracker shrimp, and a bowl of tortilla soup that were cooked with a precision you don't get with most home-cooked meals. Next came the Texas ribeye steak, or blackened redfish, a nod to Mr. Scheffler's decades in Texas, served with macaroni and cheese, jalapeño creamed corn, fried Brussels sprouts and fries. For those who could afford dessert, there were warm skillet chocolate chip cookies with milk and cookie ice cream.
“I had some soup and I had to wipe the top of my head because I was sweating,” Lyle said, just before mocking 1992 winner Fred Couples' apparently delicate palate. Ta.
“I like hot food. I'm used to things like curry, so it's not too bad,” Lyle said. “But I think Couples was kind of holding his throat. 'Oh my God.' So some people were surprised.”
Mr. Scheffler didn't seem concerned. His menu, his rules.
The next day, he reported, “Everyone enjoyed the meal.”