The winner of the Masters Tournament receives a green jacket, an elegantly engraved trophy and a lifetime invitation to play in one of the most revered events in professional golf.
He also has a chance to plan a dinner next spring for other Masters winners (and pick up the check for one of the most exclusive nights in sports).
“How rare is it for everyone to be in a room like this where it’s just us?” Scottie Scheffler said hours before his dinner last year with 32 fellow Masters champions and Fred S. Ridley, the president of Augusta National Golf Club, the tournament’s venue.
“There is no one else,” Scheffler continued. “There’s the president and then there’s us.”
And in a tournament where concessions are legendary, the pressure is forever on the new champion to choose a menu that fits the moment. Tiger Woods offered cheeseburgers and milkshakes after his first Masters win in 1997, but over the years he built menus that included sushi, porterhouse steaks and chocolate truffle cake. Sandy Lyle went with Haggis after his win in 1988. Vijay Singh’s choice of Thai food delighted some players and surprised others.
When Jon Rahm, the 2023 winner, shows up for his dinner Tuesday night, he’ll sit down to a meal that starts with six tapas and pintxos, including “Mama Rahm’s Classic Lentil Stew,” a recipe from his grandmother Rahm. Later, there will be a Basque crab salad, a choice of rib-eye steak or flounder and a dessert of milhojas de crema y nata — a puff pastry cake with Chantilly cream and custard that was essentially Rahm’s wedding cake.
Spanish-born chef José Andrés helped the Spanish-born golfer grow the menu.
“Shout out to my grandmother for the recipe” to the lentil stew, Ram said last month. “If someone doesn’t like it, please don’t tell me. Don’t tell anyone, actually. It means a little too much for me to hear.”
“I wanted to put a little bit of my heritage and my family into this dinner, which will make it even more special,” he added. “I hope to do it again, but I wanted to make sure the Basque heritage was there.”
The evening wasn’t always so accommodating. For years, the menu consisted of little more than a steak, a baked potato and free-flowing wine, offerings that reflected the habits, homogeneity and not-so-adventurous nature of many professional golfers. After Tommy Aaron won the tournament in 1973, he recalled in a 2020 interview, he called an Augusta National official to ask about the menu and learned that the spread was rather predictable. He chose to offer a plate of beef, lobster bisque and a crab salad.
“After dinner, a couple of guys said, ‘Well, we’re glad to have something other than a strip steak,'” recalled Aaron, who forever ordered whatever the champ was drawing instead of an entree cop.
Scheffler recalled conceptualizing his menu with his wife and agent. They started with a basic premise — Scheffler’s favorite foods — and began narrowing the list down from there. After consulting with an Augusta National chef, they settled on a menu that, the golfer said, “certainly wouldn’t be on any nutritionist’s plan.”
When Augusta National allowed The New York Times into their kitchen last April, a team of cooks was preparing what would be perhaps the most elaborate meal of the year, with dozens of dishes that had to be personalized, timed and heated just so.
There were appetizers of cheeseburger sliders, prepared with a precision that eludes most home cooks, shrimp crackers and bowls of tortilla soup. Then there are the Texas steaks, reflecting Scheffler’s decades in the state, or the blackened redfish, with macaroni and cheese, jalapeño creamed corn, fried Brussels sprouts and French fries. For those with room for dessert, there was a warm chocolate chip cookie pan with milk and cookie ice cream.
“I had the soup and I had to kind of take a cotton swab off the top of my head because it was sweating,” Lyle said just before mocking the apparently sensitive tastes of Fred Zeugaria, the 1992 winner.
“I like hot food — I’m used to curries and stuff, so I’m not too bad,” Lyle said. “But I think Zevaria was, like, holding his neck — ‘Oh, my God.’ So it took some people by surprise.”
Scheffler didn’t seem bothered. His menu, his rules.
“Everyone,” he reported the next day, “enjoyed the food.”
