On Saturday night, as Charli XCX performed the hottest album of 2024 and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont spoke to young Clairo fans, about 300 people were eating frog legs and beef tongue inside the sweltering V.I.P. Rose Garden of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif.
The sold-out dinner, hosted by Outstanding in the Field — a roving restaurant of sorts known for white-table cloth meals in unexpected locations — has become one of the flashier options at Coachella, where the food has been steadily improving for years. It is the group’s 10th year at the festival, and they expect to host about 1,800 guests over the course of the festival’s two weekends.
“Most people are waiting for the schedule to come out to see who’s on the lineup for the shows and I’m always like, ‘Well, who’s the lineup for the chefs?’” said Diane Leeds, a frequent attendee who retired from a career in finance and now describes her lifestyle as nomadic.
At the hot, dusty desert festival, temperatures regularly break 100 degrees and it’s easy to spend a full day wordlessly waiting in traffic and bathroom lines with the other 125,000 daily attendees. Outstanding in the Field’s dinner offers a rare chance for cold drinks, comfortable chairs and friendly strangers.
The family-style, four-course dinners take place from 6 p.m. until about 8:30 p.m. and are prepared by different chefs each night. Each seat costs $350, which is a hefty price to tack on after buying a pricey festival pass that start at around $600 for general admission and $1,200 for V.I.P. access. But a ticket to the dinner also grants general admission attendees access to that V.I.P. section for the day, which includes air-conditioned restrooms and special food vendors like KazuNori, a popular chain of hand roll bars in Los Angeles.
“I’m here solo, and I thought it was a good opportunity to meet other people and just enjoy myself and get good food,” said Sarah McLamb, 40, who traveled from Seattle, where she works for the real estate website Zillow.
Every seat at the table was set with a mismatched colorful and ornate plates, complementing the roses that grew in the lush garden. Attendees sipped gin and grapefruit cocktails as they found a place to hunker down for the evening.
Saturday’s dinner was prepared by Diego Argoti, a Los Angeles-based chef known for hosting Estrano pasta pop-ups in city streets and creating Poltergeist, a popular restaurant inside a (now closed) Echo Park arcade. His staff included an eccentric mix of buzzy local chefs — like Carlos Jaquez, who runs a pop up called Birria Pa La Cruda, and Danny Rodriguez, the head chef at Echo Park’s Butchr Bar — and miscellaneous friends and family.
“My mom’s cooking with us,” Mr. Argoti said earlier in the day, wearing four thick braids and a bit of shimmering glitter on each temple. “We came to Coachella together when I was like 14 and snuck into Rage Against the Machine.”
With a reputation for crafting chaotic yet tasty dishes, Mr. Argoti’s menu included an endive and frog leg salad, a duck confit with hibiscus toum, grilled beef tongue with strawberry puttanesca and a pandan-flavored mochi cake. Each course came with a wine pairing or nonalcoholic alternative.
“I’ve almost created, like, a vanity culinary escape room,” he said. “Like, all right, cool, you paid this amount for this experience. Beautiful. But now we’re gonna have you eat frog legs and gizzards and something that is luxurious to me.”
Since guests can’t see what’s being served before they arrive at the dinner, Mr. Argoti’s menu naturally caught some diners a bit off guard. A handful of people walked out after the first course was served. (One woman said the salad was very good, although she didn’t want to try the frog legs.)
But many attendees said they were delighted by the unpredictable yet communal nature of the dinner. Taking place in a manicured garden that’s tucked next to the Mojave tent, the dinner comes with a list of local purveyors who provide the vegetables, meat and wine pairings each evening. As people dined on Saturday, David Retsky, a farmer from Thermal, Calif., who grew many of that night’s salad ingredients, walked individual diners through the greens and blossoms on their plate.
“If you’re a picky eater, it’d be hard to try the food,” said Lelna Gwet, 27. “If you’re not a picky eater, this is like a foodie in heaven. You have so many flavors at play here, and the farmers come to the table, which is amazing.”
Ms. Gwet, an electrical engineer from Washington, D.C., arrived with her sister, Mata, and one of their friends. By the end of the night, the three of them were chatting with people sitting nearby and adorning new friends with roll-on body glitter.
“This is what makes Outstanding in the Field outstanding,” Ms. Gwet said, as they finished glasses of wine.
Jim Denevan, the artist who founded of Outstanding in the Field, said that while he believes the dinner functions as a “social glue,” it was invited to Coachella in 2014 for another important reason: the festival needed more food choices.
“At that point, there were limited options at music festivals: Burrito, hot dog, burger, taco,” said Nic Adler, the vice president of festivals at Goldenvoice, who’s often credited for making music festival food more interesting and Instagram-able. “Quick food, that was it. No brands, no restaurants, very generic signage.”
Now, Coachella has more than 75 food vendors, including a $350 Nobu omakase experience and plenty of $20 burgers, sandwiches and baskets of loaded fries.
“To have these elevated chefs doing their craft, and the local farm ingredients with the farmers here walking along the table, it costs more than a slice of pizza,” said Mr. Denevan, 63. “But in a sense, it’s just choices among choices.”
And though a few dozen people left the dinner early to catch the end or start of various performances, which included Charli XCX and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, about half of the long table lingered after dessert to continue chatting with their tablemates.
“In the sea of however many people are here, you don’t have a conversation with any of them beyond like, ‘I’m sorry I bumped into you,’ or ‘excuse me,’” said Jonathan Wadell, who was at the dinner with his wife, Sarah-Sue Wadell. “So it’s nice to have a conversation here.”
Mr. Wadell, 46, and Ms. Wadell, 45, traveled to the festival from Santa Barbara to celebrate their 21st anniversary. They described the sit-down meal as a welcome break from the intense heat.
“It’s always fun to be out there, but this is a really nice respite,” Ms. Wadell added. “Now we’re ready to party.”
“By that she means watch a show, or an act, and then go out of here early, and go to bed,” Mr. Wadell added.
Anna Wood, 52, attended the dinners on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, with her partner, Glen Mason. The couple has come to Coachella from York, England, for the last three years, and the dinners are usually part of their itinerary.
“We met a couple from Palm Springs the first time we were here,” Mr. Mason, 63, said. “We stayed in touch with them and we see them every time we come to Coachella.”
As veterans, they’ve also become pretty good at shaking off the inevitable feeling of festival FOMO.
“It’s always got to be a balance,” Mr. Mason said. “Sometimes we miss somebody who we would like to see, but then there’s probably more benefit in having a delicious dinner with delicious wine.”
“Charli XCX we actually would have liked to have seen tonight,” he added, “but we’ve had those gorgeous frogs’ legs.”
