The Staggering Amount Of Food Served At The 2026 Grammy Awards

We don't blame you if you snoozed on the Grammys to plan your Super Bowl snacks for the upcoming weekend. As did many people, since viewership for the awards show has been dropping drastically over the last decade or so. And the event hasn't made much of a splash in the food world, except, of course, for stories about the lavish spread celebs are treated to. 

Last year, for example, we saw Taylor Swift swigging $1,200 sparkling wine from a vineyard co-owned by Jay-Z. This year, however, the focus is more on food than drink, since concessionaire Levy Restaurants went overboard to make sure that no guests left the Crypto.com Arena without having packed on a few pounds. To this end, the caterers prepared 600 pounds of short rib, 15,000 shrimp, and 12,000 pieces of sushi.

Other appetizers included movie snacks with a south-of-the-border flair: chile-spiced dried mango, Corn Nuts with Tajin, lime-flavored popcorn, and Doritos chile limon dinamita. (Doritos is one of the stadium vendors.) Luxury suite guests also dined on duck carnitas flatbread with tapatio-cured egg yolk, mezcal-braised beef short rib, nopales torta, and tortilla kabobs with lime-marinated chicken and adobada beef. Up in the Delta Sky360 Club, the menu included bluefin tuna crudo and deviled eggs with char siu bacon and chili crunch. Nor did participants go thirsty, since there was enough sparkling wine on hand to pour at least 2,000 glasses.

The centerpiece of the Grammy Awards catering was a 600-pound cheese sculpture carved into a menage of musical instruments, including drums, piano keys, and trumpets. The sculptor, Sarah Kaufmann, specializes in cheese as a medium, but this piece was hardly her largest. In fact, she was a member of the team that holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest cheese sculpture: a 3,121-pound block of cheddar featuring an alligator chef cooking a deep-fried turkey. 

Cheese sculptures may not be quite as elegant as ice ones, but they are a lot tastier and also more practical since cheese doesn't melt at room temperature. In fact, the USDA says that only soft or shredded cheeses really need to be refrigerated. The type of cheese Kaufmann used was cheddar cheese from New Mexico, so it should have been safe to serve to Grammy attendees even after sitting out for several hours. Carvings from the large block of cheddar were used to make grilled cheese sandwiches at the event. Perhaps Aldi should've launched another line of musically-named cheeses to join in on the fun.