Food history collection

Feasts & dining

6stories

Dining can be ritual, entertainment and social theatre. These stories step inside unusual restaurants, private clubs, royal banquets and meals that became historic events in their own right.

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Feasts & diningAug 28, 2026

The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks

In Georgian Era London, some of Britain’s most powerful men formed an exclusive dining club devoted almost entirely to eating enormous steaks, drinking heavily and celebrating the virtues of beef. They took their society so seriously that they even appointed their own bishop and when the Prince of Wales told them that he’d like to join their club, they simply told him they had a strict 24 seat policy, and all 24 seats were already full. This is the strange story of The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks.

Feasts & diningJun 21, 2024

56 - Robert May's "Spectacle Feasts"

The entire experience of eating a fancy meal these days is no longer just about the food itself. For decades, chefs like Heston Blumenthal have been creating entire culinary experiences to delight all of your senses at once, pairing sounds, smells and textures along with the already delicious flavours of their food. But while this trend has taken off again more recently, this is by no means a modern practice. In fact, as far back as the early 1600’s an innovative chef by the name of Robert May was creating similar sensory dining experiences all around Elizabethan England. Today, we’ll discover just who this man was, and how he went about revolutionising banquets into what would come to be called his "Spectacle Feasts".

Feasts & diningMay 10, 2024

53 - Fat Men's Clubs

For as long as so-called civilised societies have existed, equally uncivilised clubs and groups have sprung up within them, allowing their members to revel in all sorts of weird and wonderful excesses. In previous episodes we have heard about secret food clubs with a goal of eating every type of animal on earth. Todays story may not be so different, although this clubs members were’nt so picky about reaching any particular goal other that just eating every type of food they could get their hands on.

Feasts & diningJun 11, 2022

36 - Black Banquets & Funeral Feasts

There are quite a few stories from historical banquetry that weren’t of the presumed fun and hearty nature. Instead it seems that there was an occasional trend, in wealthy circles specifically, to up the ante so to speak and either trick their guests into believing one thing when in fact an entirely other thing was true, or making them believe that they were about to face actual real death at any given moment. Listen to find out more.

Feasts & diningMar 6, 2022

32 - A Banquet On Horseback

In today's society, those who are able to, are always seeking out new and wondrous dining experiences. More than a hundred years ago, men and women with too much time on their hands and more money than they knew what to do with, were hosting equally bizarre and fascinating dinners of their own. But it was a man named C.K.G Billings who would go down in the history books as being the host of one of the strangest of them all.

Feasts & diningOct 2, 2020

20 - Al Capone Once Ran A Soup Kitchen

Al Capone was a model student for most of his childhood, but he didn't take long to go from fresh-faced to scar-faced. The Great Depression had just hit and people were out of work and starving. The man who was known to the law as a gangster was seen by the public as a hero. Every day Al Capone's soup kitchen served 350 loaves of bread and more than 1200 rolls to 2000+ hungry people in the city of Chicago, no questions asked.