16 Dec 2025 7 min read Food Styling

The Dinner Plan (2025)

The Dinner Plan is a 30-minute film directed by Patrick Willems on Nebula. The story follows Henry, an IT guy who is violently allergic to tomatoes, and the ensuing dinner party at his boss's house. The goal? Do not throw up in front of everyone.

We spent 5 days on set in South Brooklyn as the food stylist and culinary consultant. Under the leadership of production designer Casey McCoy, we advised and executed the design for five items on the menu as well as a few other food-related aspects. Spoilers ahead if you read any further.

It's not a dinner party without cheese! It may look like a simple cheese board for a dinner party, but a lot of decisions were made on how replicable this arrangement was. If an actor were to remove pieces, could we easily put them back to reset for another take?

This photo is not for posterity; it’s a reference for consistency. That meant no gooey cheeses, no wet condiments on the board, nothing that would “age” or deteriorate as it sat. We did have another platter ready to go if this one got messed up too much, and lots of extra slices of everything to swap any that got broken after handling. We learned a lot about continuity from this platter. If someone took pieces for their appetizer plate, we also took a photo of that in case they traveled with it in the next scene.

Our stars of the show, tomatoes, were mostly sourced by production designer Casey McCoy because they were not being used for cooking, but for display. You can buy vine-ripe, grape, and cherry tomatoes from the grocery store, but we contributed a few choice heirloom tomatoes from the Union Square Farmer's Market to round out the kitchen scene. We chose firm, bright red tomatoes with bulbous and bumpy textures. We did not buy super-ripe tomatoes because they needed to stay on the counter for a few days.

Our secret? Store tomatoes upside down (stem-side) on the counter to prevent it from ripening too fast. We simply needed to flip them back over to style for camera.

We love it when Camille exclaims, "Bruschettaaaa!" Bruschetta is a small crostini, a toasted piece of baguette topped with seasoned diced tomato, olive oil, garlic, and fresh herbs. In our experience, it's a notoriously delicate dish that can get soggy as it sits. To combat this, we employed several tactics.

Starting with the bread, we chose a grocery store brand over artisanal loaves. While we love the taste of the fancy stuff, they often have unpredictable holes where the tomato can fall through. We needed the pieces to look uniform, so they could be switched out. We also brushed the bread with an herb oil and toasted it at a low temperature to remove as much moisture as possible without browning it.

For the tomato topping itself, we used a shortcut: store-bought pico de gallo! The dice were uniform and already seasoned. We set the salsa in a strainer in a bowl overnight to remove all of the liquid. We avoided adding any salt because it could change the texture of the tomatoes. Finally, we cut fresh parsley to sprinkle on at the last minute to emphasize that they were "just made." We know basil is customary in bruschetta, but it tends to oxidize quickly when cut. Parsley stays greener, longer. We kept a lot of extra toasts and toppings on deck to switch out any pieces that got soggy.

The salad course was a simple Caprese. It is fresh tomato, mozzarella, and basil shingled together. The whole platter is drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We again avoided adding kosher salt because it would leech out a lot of liquid. We did place a few key flakes of Maldon salt, which is bigger and doesn't dissolve on contact. Instead of balsamic vinegar, we opted for a glaze reduction that could be more controlled and darker on camera. It's a relatively easy dish to reset, so Miriam Shor could get the perfect "plop" onto the plate.

For the main course, we made a whopping 8 vegetarian lasagnas styled in two different casserole pans. To make it super clear that tomatoes were the main ingredient, we placed two rows of roasted tomato slices on top. It was also a visual guide for the actors to slice even portions on camera. We arranged and par-baked each lasagna on our prep day. When it was time to shoot them, we redressed the tops with cheese and roasted tomatoes before they went on the table. We brought a Searzall torch to give the top that melty, toasty, right-out-of-the oven appearance.

We kept it vegetarian across the board to minimize the number of versions we needed to make and to account for actual allergens and dietary restrictions. The only exception was Geoffrey, who needed a separate gluten-free portion to eat on camera. The lasagna needed to be edible with no artificial props because the cast would be consuming it across many scenes. Once it was portioned, we took photos of each actor’s plate to track it for continuity.

Finally, for dessert, we researched many ways to make a tomato sorbet that would not melt under the set lights and still be edible. Our initial findings suggested mashed potato, which was a fun idea, but did not read as a scoop of sorbet on camera. It looked too opaque on account of its starchy nature. Fondant was the next item we explored. For the price point, it would cost us too much per pound. Our answer came from Scott Reeder on Youtube:

We bought a few tubs of readymade cake frosting and powdered sugar from the grocery store and went to work color-matching a red that would look tomato-y enough. Our initial tests with red water-based food coloring appeared too pink and looked like a “bubblegum” flavor. With blue additions, it looked more like grape and red wine sorbet. A red gel food coloring with a few drops of white got us to the vivid cartoon-y red Patrick wanted. He also snuck tastes of our scraps whenever he walked by our kitchen area.

The sorbet hardened after an hour of sitting in the dishes, so we needed to be ready with freshly scooped pieces when the actors were taking bites. We styled two “scoops” for each dish with a little silver spoon. We do have to warn you, if you use this level of red gel food coloring, the talent must not consume large bites of it or it will color their tongue red.

Once our final dish was shot, we set to packing up the leftovers for the cast and crew to take home. For every project, we aim to reduce the amount of waste by diverting leftovers away from landfills. We found the leftover “sorbet” was a perfect Oreo-like filling for gingersnap cookies.

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