The Golden Globes are going vegan this year — even the stars’ off-camera buffet

Forget Chilean sea bass: This year, “the party of the year” is going vegan.

The 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, which recognizes the best in film and television, will serve its A-list guests a 100% plant-based dinner. It’s the first major awards show to go entirely meatless. Then again, it’s also the first major awards show of the season.

The vegan mandate includes the hidden-from-cameras buffet tables, set up near the open bars, where many of the late-arriving famous get their sustenance (and lay a foundation for their cocktails) during the show.

With lots of stars hanging out on the red carpet or in the lobby or not even showing up until right before showtime, and the dinner service whisked away by servers before the show starts, much of the formal chow never makes it to the guests. But the off-camera piles of turkey sandwiches and chunks of cheese will be gone, to be replaced by meatless, dairy-free choices.

“Over the holidays, we took time to reflect on the last year and began thinking about the new year and the decade ahead,” Lorenzo Soria, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., said in a statement to The Times on Thursday. “The climate crisis is impossible to ignore and after speaking with our peers, and friends in the community, we felt challenged to do better.

“The decision to serve an entirely plant-based meal was embraced by our partners at the Beverly Hilton, and represents a small step in response to a big problem,” he continued.

This year’s menu will include a chilled golden beet soup appetizer followed by a main course of king oyster mushrooms scallops — no actual scallops involved — and wild mushroom risotto, along with carrots and roasted baby purple and green Brussels sprouts.

Although dinners at the Globes have been gluten-free for a while now, they’ve definitely not been vegan. Last year’s menu included sea bass and vegetables and a flourless chocolate cake topped with amaretto cream cheese. Vegetarians got a stuffed honeynut squash with hummus, rainbow chard, chickpeas, quinoa, raisins and sunflower sprouts.

The 2018 menu for the meat-eaters also featured sea bass. Celebrity guests in 2017 were treated to a fancy filet mignon and, surprise, sea bass. Way back in 2016, it was filet and steelhead trout, and the year before that, filet and Arctic char.

The decision to go plant-based this year was met with some initial resistance.

“People were basically saying it’s too late, we’re ready with all the orders, the holidays and all that,” Soria, who decided to change the menu about two weeks before the show, told the Associated Press. “But after we began discussions, meeting for one or two days, [the Beverly Hilton team] accepted the change completely. They started to experiment with how to do plant-based meals that was not just their symbolic steps, but also something that guests will enjoy.”

Executive chef Matthew Morgan wasn’t too stoked about the idea at first, but he came to realize the menu change communicated a vital message about environmental sustainability.

“That’s something I stand being myself,” he told AP.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. also wants to reduce plastic waste this year, so it teamed with Icelandic Glacial to offer guests water in glass bottles. Any straws, of course, will be paper.

The Golden Globe Awards will air live on NBC this Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific.