Serpentine Summer Party 2023 is a gastronomic spectacular

Every year, the Serpentine Summer Party brings together figures from the world of art, design, fashion, music and, this year especially, food, to celebrate the season around the Serpentine Pavilion. 

The designer of the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion, and creative director of this year’s party – which took place yesterday evening (27 June) – is French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh. Her design, entitled À table, is inspired by her Mediterranean heritage and a lifetime spent having passionate discussions about everything from personal events to political subjects around the table.

Gotmeh’s pavilion design features a large concentric table where guests are invited to gather in the shade of a wooden canopy and share their own experiences and ideas. The architect extended that congenial ethos to her programme for the party. During the course of the evening, guests were invited to indulge in limited-edition Ladurée macarons featuring a design by Ghotmeh – a nod to her French heritage as well as a playful, and delicious, collaboration between the storied brand known for its pastel confectionary and the contemporary architect. 

Also on the menu was a dessert table by chef Skye Gyngell, best known for winning a Michelin star at the Petersham Nurseries Café and for her restaurant Spring in the 19th-century drawing room within Somerset House, where she creates a daily-changing menu of exceptional food made with ingredients that are ethically sourced and leave as little waste as possible. 

For her table at the Serpentine Summer Party, Gyngell created desserts that use seasonal British produce to complement distinctly Middle-Eastern flavours, such as pistachio, date, and rosewater. Ingredients were sourced from small, regenerative farms, taking cues from Ghotmeh’s aspiration to create a sustainable kinship with the land through food.

All this was served alongside glasses of R de Ruinart, from the world’s oldest champagne house and longstanding patron of the arts, whose sponsorship extends to Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene for Ruinart, a commission originally part of Ruinart’s Countdown series that is intended to highlight the extremities of the climate emergency and which was on show during the evening's events. 

Also on display was Gabriel Massan’s video-game-inspired Follower and a preview of olfactory artist Sissel Toolas’ upcoming project Invisible Pompeii, which draws from a volcanic stone that carries a scent of 79 AD.

Speaking about this expansive programme ahead of the event, Ghotmeh said, 'the theme of conviviality and unity takes centre stage in À Table and that will also resonate with this year’s Summer Party. It’s an honour to be invited to contribute to the creative direction of this prestigious event.

'For the party, I designed a special leaflet featuring the programme for the night. I also painted a large-scale vibrant artwork that will bring memorable photographic moments to the party. It was also important for me to bring the Aga Khan Master Musicians from The Soriana Project. They are eminent performer-composer-improvisers from Syria and the West who play contemporary music inspired by the rich cultural heritage of the Middle East. Musicians Basel Rajoub, Feras Charestan, and Andrea Piccioni will perform a semi-improvised exclusive set mixing duclar, drums, and saxophone.’

‘Lastly,’ says Ghotmeh, ‘I was invited by Maison Ladurée to design a limited-edition macarons box, [to be] served to guests bringing ideas of sharing, conversation and sweet tastes, together.'

The Serpentine Pavilion is open until 29 October 2023, serpentinegalleries.org