Delaware North: Michelin-starred dining at the Emirates FA Cup Final

In May 2026, Delaware North and Wembley Stadium put a Michelin-starred chef in charge of a concessions menu for the Emirates FA Cup Final. Delaware North believe it to be the first time that has been done at a major stadium.

We were commissioned to make the first episode of the Signature Chef Series: a highlight film led by interviews with the chefs, along with a pack of photography covering the dishes and the event around them.

The two chefs

Andrew Wong holds two Michelin stars and is the only Michelin-starred chef for Chinese cuisine in the UK. He built the menu around dim sum and the layered flavours his restaurant is known for, adapted for the scale the day demanded.

Calum Franklin, chef patron of Public House and known to most people as the Pie King, brought his own contribution to the same series.

What made it worth filming

Stadium food is usually where expectations are set low. Feeding a 90,000-seat venue in a single afternoon is a logistics problem before it is a cooking one, and the constraints normally decide the menu.

Delaware North ran it the other way round. They began with chefs whose reputations rest on detail, then worked out how that detail could survive a cup final. That is a harder brief than putting a good chef in a good kitchen, and it is the part an audience never sees unless someone films it.

A long wait, then fifteen minutes

Three of us worked the day. I was on camera and interviews, César Morel was on the second camera, and Mark Bryan covered the photography.

We arrived early and set the shot and the lighting up straight away, which turned out to be the right call. The chefs’ schedule was full from the moment we got there, and we needed both of them free at the same time. So we waited. That slot did not come until there were fifteen minutes left before we had to clear the room, and by then the client was in there with us.

Fifteen minutes with two chefs is not much, and the interviews were the part the whole film rested on. That is where the years before Lumira earn their keep. I spent a long time in a news agency and in television journalism, then a long stretch working with corporate clients, and what carries over is knowing how to keep a question short. A chef who has been on his feet since morning does not need a preamble. You ask something simple, let the answer run, and you can tell while it is happening whether you have what the film needs.

Being in the room without being in the way

In hospitality you have to be there without being visible. The flow of the service is the thing you must not disturb, and on a day like this that mattered more than any other decision we made. A room of guests should not have to think about a film crew, and a kitchen mid-service certainly should not.

That is also why the crew stayed at three. On a job like this an extra pair of hands costs you more in room presence than it gains you in coverage.

The waiting was not dead time

While we were set up and waiting, the kitchen kept sending dishes out to us to photograph. That is where most of the food photography came from, shot as each plate arrived rather than staged afterwards.

The rest of the day went on the material around the interviews: the kitchen at work, the hospitality boxes, the staff, the service, the decoration, and the event at Wembley as a whole. The atmosphere in the room was as much a part of it as the food.

None of that was filler. When the interview window is fifteen minutes and cannot be repeated, the material you gathered while waiting is what gives the edit somewhere to go.

Working with Delaware North

This was our second project with Delaware North UK. The first was their conference at London Stadium, which is where the relationship started. The Signature Chef Series is the point where that became a longer-term partnership.

Delaware North is family-owned, more than a hundred years old, and one of the largest privately owned hospitality and entertainment companies in the world. They report annual revenue of around four billion dollars, over 40,000 team members and 200 locations across three continents, serving more than half a billion guests a year. In the UK their venues include Wembley Stadium, the Emirates Stadium, London Stadium and Pride Park.

The useful life of a film like this runs well past the week it goes out. Premium hospitality is sold on how an experience looks and feels, and a day like this gives a commercial team something concrete to show a corporate booker who was not there.