Oh deer! Rory McIlroy puts elk on the Masters champions dinner menu

"In the buildup to the Masters last year, I was eating a lot of elk. I got this big shipment of elk and I was eating a lot of that. I didn't want elk to be the main course because I didn't know if everyone would like that. So I incorporated that into the appetisers."

"One of our favourite restaurants right now is in New York, called Le Bernardin. Eric Ripert is the chef there and this is a dish from that restaurant. It's a really simple dish, but every time we go to that restaurant, that's the one thing that I have to have. So that's a fun one that the club worked with me on."

"When I was a kid I used to eat champ by the bowlful. So trying to incorporate that into the dinner was important to me because it's such a big part of my childhood and my heritage."

Rory McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion, has curated a menu for the 2026 Masters champion's dinner that celebrates his personal food preferences and cultural heritage. The menu features grilled elk sliders with caramelised onion jam and roasted garlic aioli as appetisers, inspired by his heavy elk consumption before winning last year's tournament. Additional starters include his mother Rosie McIlroy's bacon-wrapped dates. The main course offers Wagyu fillet mignon or seared salmon, preceded by yellowfin tuna carpaccio replicated from his favourite New York restaurant, Le Bernardin. The meal concludes with champ, a traditional Northern Irish side dish from his childhood. Augusta National's chefs visited the New York restaurant to ensure accurate preparation of the tuna dish.

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