Mother Wolf Chef Evan Funke to Make Debut Designing Menu for Vanity Fair Oscar Party
Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorLos Angeles chef Evan Funke knows his way around the Oscars.Not only is his father, Alex, a three-time Academy Award winning visual effects director (“I’ve been to a couple of Oscars as a guest of my dad’s,” Evan says), but he’s also helped create the dishes for the annual Governors Ball several times alongside culinary celeb Wolfgang Puck.And now this year, Funke, whose Italian eateries Felix in Venice and Hollywood’s Mother Wolf are celebrity and industry hot spots, will make his debut designing the menu for the Vanity Fair viewing dinner and after-party, which returns this year to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills after the 2021 hiatus due to the pandemic. Variety caught up with Funke as he put the finishing touches on the top-secret menu to talk pasta, Bill Murray and the dangers of red sauce.How do you begin coming up with a menu for one of Hollywood’s biggest parties of the year? I want everyone to have pasta and one pasta that I really wanted to highlight is something that was passed on to me during my very first trip when I moved to Italy — Alessandra Spisni’s lasagna Bolognese.