THE GAME DINNER

The Game Dinner is an evening in early November in a private room in New York, taken for the night: a supper of game in season, venison, grouse and pheasant among it, bought from licensed purveyors, hung and cooked by a kitchen that knows how, with a menu that is not fixed until a few days beforehand.

It exists because game, in the words of Cornell’s Wild Harvest Table programme, provides “not only food for the table but stories and histories for those gathered around the table.”

Game in Season

“Venison originally described any meat obtained through the process of hunting a wild game animal.” The word comes from the Latin venari, “to hunt or pursue”. Game is lean, and it asks for a cook who knows it: brining, marinating, braising, and steaks that are not overcooked. It was hung before it was cooked. Hanging is “the culinary process of dry-aging meat to develop its flavor and tenderness”, applied to beef and game alike, and “traditionally, game meat was hung until ’high’ or ’gamey’, that is, approaching a state of decomposition.”

The seasons are old. In Britain the Glorious Twelfth, 12 August, opens the red grouse, and most other game follows on 1 September, with woodcock and pheasant on 1 October; the Game Act of 1773 forbade red grouse to be sold before 12 August. In New York the ruffed grouse, often called “partridge”, “pa’tridge” or “pat”, is open from 20 September in the Northern Zone and from 1 October in the Southern, to the end of February. The state releases about fifty thousand pheasants a year on public and private land. The gun season for deer in the Southern Zone opens on the third Saturday of November, which in 2026 is 21 November, so that an early November supper comes before it.

The law shapes the table. Wild game taken in New York may be “bought and sold, as provided in this section ... and not otherwise”, and game legally taken “may be possessed, prepared and served by a non-profit organization at any meeting for the members and guests provided that there is no charge for the meal.” Native wild birds may not be sold for food. “By law, in America, you cannot commercialize something that has been shot in the wild,” Ariane Daguin told the New York Times in 2006. Restaurant venison, the paper said, “is probably coming from an enormous ranch in New Zealand”; “that pheasant is probably farmed.” Scottish game birds, shot and inspected after death, can be sold, and Picholine served wild Scottish grouse, mallard, red-legged partridge and wood pigeon.

It was not always so. Turn-of-the-century menus, George Faison recalled, showed game “people were shooting in Jamaica Bay or the Meadowlands and then bringing into the restaurant.” In 1985 Daguin and Faison founded D’Artagnan, at Union, New Jersey, which sells venison, wild boar, pheasant, squab and “wild Scottish game” to the kitchens of New York; Daguin had sold imported birds to Daniel, Per Se and Country.

At Daniel, on East 65th Street, Daniel Boulud held his first Fall Game Feast on 10 November 2005: five courses with grouse, partridge and venison, at $385. By 2010 it was an annual dinner at $1,000 a head for the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation, which the house said “began as a private affair inspired by friends of the chef, all game enthusiasts.” On 18 November that year the private room held a T-shaped table “laden with stemware and a taxidermied covey of birds”, and the menu ran to a “woodpigeon and chestnut ballotine” and a “Juniper scented grouse pâté”.

The Evening

One evening in early November, in a private room in New York taken for the night. The Court keeps no house of its own.

A supper of game in season, venison, grouse and pheasant among it.

The game comes from licensed purveyors, and is hung and cooked by a kitchen that knows how.

The menu is not fixed until a few days beforehand.

What Is Asked

Black tie. Nothing is published for a private room; black tie, in one account, “is worn for dinner parties (public, fraternities, private)”, and the Court keeps to it.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

The number of places and the sum are stated in the invitation.

The Court’s Charity Gala Dinner follows in the middle of the month.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.