There are two places where a restaurant like the Grand Tier could exist: inside a snowglobe, or inside New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Luckily, it has been housed in the latter — encased in some 45,000 feet of glass, no less — for the past 60 years, where it offers hungry opera-goers a surreal experience. I have never before, for example, eaten a crab cake while locking eyes with a flying goat in a 30-foot tall Chagall painting, nor have I ended dinner with the trill of a glockenspiel, reminding me that it’s time to finish my dessert and watch Madame Butterfly confront her cheating husband.
A Whirlwind Tale of the Met Opera’s 30-Minute Intermission Dining
Timothée Chalamet probably doesn’t know The Grand Tier has espresso martinis on tap — but now, I do
For the general manager George Krpeyan, that’s just another Tuesday night. A week prior, I called him on the phone to learn more about how the Met manages to feed the thousands of people in its halls, and, particularly, about the feat of the Grand Tier’s intermission service.
It’s also worth noting that I came on a Met Under 40 night, which offers discounted tickets for folks under 40 years old, and aims to usher in a younger, more diverse audience. It’s also a task that feels especially important in light of recent discussions about the opera’s cultural relevance, which were clumsily and rather insultingly catalyzed by actor Timothée Chalamet’s remarks during a recent interview, and which culminated in a general consensus that, yes, the world of opera and ballet is important. But who gains access to it?
As the Met’s only public sit-down restaurant (there’s a staff and performer cafeteria, but that’s behind closed doors), the Grand Tier asks its diners to place orders 48 hours in advance, either through an online form or by phone. Otherwise, there’s a handful of standing bars scattered throughout the building where folks can grab a spur-of-the-moment bite that is more accessible, price-wise, than a prix fixe menu; there’s a Black Forest ham and Brie cheese sandwich ($12), a chocolate bar, or, my personal favorite, the espresso martini on-tap, which churns in a Ketel One-branded machine on the counter. “That was my initiative,” Krpeyan tells me, “I started it in 2023.” It’s an adept, on-trend move for the Met, as well as one that keeps orders moving swiftly. Once the opera house’s performance begins, there’s a strict no-entry policy out of respect for performers.
My plan, I tell Krpeyan, is to load up my plate as humanly (and politely) as possible during the Madama Butterfly break. “Yes, that show has only one intermission, and it’s 30 minutes,” he says, perhaps hinting that I shouldn’t order the roast chicken and a trolley of desserts. Typically, he says, guests will space out their dinner courses an hour before the show, and during its intermission(s). Feeling a little naive, I walk things back. Should I just get a drink? A single dessert? Should I come back some other time to eat a chicken over the course of a multi-intermission Wagner? “Oh, no,” Krpeyan assures me, unfazed, “I know it sounds like it will be too short. But it’s quite calm. You won’t feel rushed. You won’t even notice how [smoothly] it runs.”
Krpeyan has been working at the Met for the past five years, and as a general manager in restaurants for 20 years in NYC, where he cut his teeth in especially high-pressure environments such as steakhouses. It’s no wonder, then, that he can so elegantly wrangle the needs of the roughly 150-ish diners who come to the Grand Tier nightly. “I also have to credit James [Alongi], our maitre d’,” he tells me, “in terms of keeping the flow [moving] and guests happy. [The diners] love him, they’ll ask to see him when they come in. He is a really cool character.”
Alongi has an ease and lyricism to his communication style that feels so utterly New York, and that is such a far throw from any haughtiness. “I think of opera as a generational thing. You kind of have to be brought into it by someone,” he tells me over the phone, “but I don’t come from a background of opera-goers.” Alongi started as the Met’s reservationist almost 25 years ago, and has been in the role of maitre d’ for almost a decade. “I’ve met people from all over the world, all different kinds of people,” he tells me, “I love hearing that someone has traveled all the way from Switzerland, and just had the perfect meal; or that someone used to come and sit at the same table with their grandparents.” As with Krpeyan, Alongi’s work before the Met was a testament to his ability to juggle a fast-paced, large-scale kitchen. “I worked at a Lehman Brothers that was open 24/7,” Alongi says, “We had to feed all those people. When their cafeteria closed, we opened up a night service. That’s when our show began.”
The Grand Tier’s menu consists of what I call velvet curtain classics: Starters include but are not limited to a white asparagus soup, duck rillette, and a shellfish platter; there are two options for Osetra caviar, and main courses such as a half roast chicken, sheep’s milk agnolotti, king salmon, and more; the dessert menu spills over with cookies and petit fours, a Russian honey cake, and — a springtime special this season — the sakura mochi (made with raspberry, chocolate, and peach), amongst other treats. For those folks dining over the course of a two-intermission opera, there is a minimum order of one food item per person, and a recommended prix-fixe order of an appetizer, main, and dessert ($120/head). A few days prior to going to the opera, I filled out my date’s and my dinner form for a fleet of appetizers and desserts, per Krpeyan’s recommendation, in a Google Doc — a welcome, old-school departure from the hells of Resy and text confirmations. It also felt a bit like writing a letter to Santa Claus. But Krpeyan reassured me that all I needed to do was simply show up, and enjoy.
My date and I devised a game plan: We would book it to the Grand Tier as soon as the lights went on during intermission, and make a pact to not drink too much (water or Champagne) in case we didn’t have time for a restroom stop. We scurried over to the host desk, and within seconds of giving our reservation name, were guided to a window-front table with a prearranged spread of bison carpaccio, crab cakes (one of the most popular items, according to Krpeyan), and root vegetables over labneh. It felt a bit like Christmas morning.
The normal rules of space-time also don’t feel like they apply in the Met, which works in the Grand Tier’s favor. The normal, anxiety-inducing sounds of a busy restaurant won’t be found there, among the carpeted floors, hushed voices, and twinkle of Sputnik-inspired chandeliers, which are somehow always in the corner of your vision. My partner’s and my minds were still elsewhere, mulling over the first act of Madama Butterfly’s tragedy, when we sat down to eat our parade of buttery and impressively thin beef carpaccio, chocolate ganache, and tête de moine fleurets. The ambiance was surprisingly relaxed and intimate, with many folks dining on a main or dessert course while engrossed in quiet conversation. As Krpeyan explained to me, many of the guests, especially those who anticipate the entire season the way others would March Madness, start their prix fixe meal the hour before the show, making their way through its courses during the intermission(s) to follow at the same table. Our evening’s opera had only one intermission, but I imagine that during, say, a nearly five-hour-long Wagner, that there’s no shortage of double espresso orders.
Looking around, my fellow diners appeared to be loyal opera attendees, generationally diverse, and partial to Aqua Net, although that’s an oversimplification. During my meal, I saw older women in ball gowns and young men who had clearly just come from work; some people dressed up with their ring lights, some people just dressed not-in-jeans. It feels fair to say that most of the New York City crowd attempts the Saturday crossword puzzle, but there were also plenty of folks coming for what appeared to be special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, date nights, mom-is-in-town activities.
The meal was a blur, but I know that by minute 17, we were on our dessert courses (an opera cake and pavlova), and while there was a brief moment of double-fisting my espresso cup and my Champagne glass, we took our final bites just as the chimes started ringing to head back to the theater. My partner even had time to stop at the restroom.
The elitism of the experience doesn’t escape me. It’s also the closest I’ll probably ever get to living out a real-life movie scene montage, albeit one that owes its magic to the work of the dozens of kitchen staff members and their fastidious, down-to-the-minute kitchen prep. Unsurprisingly, removing the steps of browsing a menu, placing an order, and waiting for food also saves a significant amount of time for the diners.
As Alongi tells me when we chat by phone days after the opera, many of the guests come to complete the opera season as part of their annual pilgrimage, but there are plenty of first-timers and, like myself, more casual opera-goers. “This is also an important place for tourists,” he tells me, “And I think that’s great. That’s what it should be, too. It’s the [opportunity] to experience something from a different time, that moves at a different pace without a lot of [care]. That’s why a lot of people don’t even want to leave.”
There is a distinct, bittersweet feeling to leaving Grand Tier. The last time 30 minutes meant this much to me, or felt this fanciful, I think I was downing the contents of my lunchbox during recess before returning to make-believe hobbit games on the playground. Is the rush of that feeling so very different from dining at the opera, in between collective flights of fantasy? Dining during the half-hour intermission at the Met is a luxury, undoubtedly. But unlike so many other indulgences in life, I think this is one I wish everyone could experience.