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From boardroom buffet to fraught family dinner, status symbol to unsavoury insult – food is often a scene-stealer in HBO’s hit series. We’ve selected our favourite mealtime moments in this banquet of nastiness. Warning: contains spoilers.
The disgusting brothers eat ortolan – S1, E6
Cousin Greg finds his fortunes changing swiftly in this episode: one minute he’s slurping noodles with his grandfather in a dingy ramen joint and waxing lyrical about California Pizza Kitchen’s cajun chicken linguine, the next he’s tasting his first ortolan in a fancy restaurant with mentor Tom Wambsgans, napkins draped over their heads to “mask the shame, heighten the pleasure”. Not that Greg enjoys the controversial dish: “If I eat any more songbirds, I’m gonna hurl.”
In turn, this scene reveals Tom’s insecurities: the middle-class Midwesterner feels the need to telegraph his rarefied tastes through what he eats and drinks (who can forget the line: “It’s the kind of wine that separates the connoisseurs from the weekend Malbec morons”), a far cry from the old-moneyed Roys, who are past such culinary posturing and indeed rarely reveal their humanity by, well, eating.
A serious Scandi spread – S4, E4
Buffet-based power games are afoot as WayStar RoyCo executives face their counterparts from Swedish start-up GoJo. The jet-lagged Americans fall upon the “serious Scandi spread” that’s been laid out and feverishly speculate which of their names will be on the “kill list” when tech wunderkind Lucas Madsen buys out the Roys. Only Tom, like a sort of gourmand Machiavelli, knows better than to tuck into this corporate gingerbread house. “Ambush,” he mutters. “You took the bait, fattened for the kill.” Sure enough, in swans Team GoJo – younger, fitter, multilingual and unencumbered by plates heaped with cinnamon buns and smoked salmon.
Butter-gate & loony cake – S1, E4
Connor initially seemed like the ‘nice’ sibling (or at least the lesser of four evils), until his meltdown at a charity gala catering crew over some butter. The problem? It’s too chilled. Sure, trying to spread hard, cold butter on your bread is annoying, but doesn’t quite warrant such an outburst: “The butter’s all f*cked! You f*ckwads, there are dinner rolls out there ripping as we speak!” Connor throws another culinary hissy fit on his wedding day, refusing to let the ‘looney cake’ be served. However, this time some extenuating context is provided – when his mother was sent to a mental institution, a young Connor was bribed with Victoria sponge. That’s Succession-land for you: even something as innocent and celebratory as wedding cake has a sinister edge.
Tom’s election night diet – S4, E8
Macall Polay/HBO
In the pressure cooker of a newsroom on election night, ATN boss Tom Wambsgans is concerned his delicate constitution could affect the, err, Constitution. Recoiling from a tray of bodega sushi, he demands a gut-safe menu of American bottled water, ginger shots and spaghetti with olive oil, plus a stream of espressos. “If I get drowsy, and I miscall Colorado, instability, right?” he reminds chief stooge Greg, somewhat self-aggrandising. “The US loses credibility, China spots an opportunity, invades Taiwan. Tactical nukes… It’s a long way back from pond life because you failed to get me a double shot!”
The offending sushi lingers on the desk like a culinary Chekov’s gun. Later, a dash of wasabi ends up in poll analyst Darwin’s eye, followed by a stinging eyebath of citrus-flavoured LaCroix. The slapstick provides some much-needed light relief in an otherwise nerve-jangling, close-to-the-bone episode about American politics. With democracy in peril, there’s just one simple piece of employee feedback for Greg to abide by: “Do not put any more lemon water or wasabi in his eyes, okay?”
Lady Caroline’s roast pigeon – S2, E7
Graeme Hunter/HBO
A culinary culture clash ensues when the American-raised Roy siblings pay a visit to their British aristo mother. First, the billionaires navigate a Middle England grocery shop, bemused. “This is for display purposes, right?” asks Roman, inspecting a tin of Lyle’s treacle. “None of this is edible?” A Scotch egg is mistaken for “giant arancini” – sorry, they don’t tend to sell those in Spar, Rome. Then, instead of the “48-ounce T-bone steak and truffle fries” to which they’re accustomed, Mum plonks down a roast pigeon containing “quite a lot of shot… a bit of feather in, too.” Despite the AGA in the background, it’s a gloriously frosty affair.
Boar on the Floor – S2, E3
Picture it: you’re at the corporate retreat from Hell and your boss, rather than letting everyone tuck into their roast dinner, devises a sadistic, debasing dinner-table game to winkle out the team’s traitor. “There are no rules” to Boar on the Floor, Logan declares, but essentially it involves being pelted with sausages by your colleagues while crawling around on all-fours and oinking. Presumably, everyone in that hunting lodge went to bed hungry.
Tom prepares for prison food – S3, E6
Facing possible jail time for the cruise ships scandal, Tom’s biggest concern is, of course, the catering “inside”. So, he does what any self-respecting white-collar criminal would do: he engages a “prison consultant, Steven”, trawls “the prison blogs about toilet wine” (it involves ketchup and water, apparently), and gets his rarefied palate “in training” for bland beige meals. This takes him to an average-Joe diner, where he picks morosely at a rubbery omelette. The verdict? “It’s like camel’s labia”. If he weren’t running a right-wing news channel, Tom could’ve had a stellar career as a restaurant critic, no?
Thank you for the chicken – S2, E10
Tom eats his feelings again – this time, by grabbing a chicken leg from his father-in-law, taking a bite and, even more awkwardly, putting it back on the plate. “Thank you for the chicken,” he monotones, with a manic glint in his eye, prompting a dumbfounded Logan to wonder: “What’s next, stick his cock in my potato salad?” Nobody has ever eaten poultry so passive-aggressively.
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