New Orleans is set to make a bid for a Guinness World Record next month, attempting to build the largest antipasto board ever assembled, right next to Caesars Casino in the French Quarter. The current record stands at 92.6 pounds and 32 feet long, and organizers of the city's Taste of Italy festival plan to top it on October 8 with help from a longtime local grocery institution.
The record attempt runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. that evening, according to WDSU, with the towering spread of cured meats, cheeses, and other Italian staples supplied by Dorignac's Food Center. The Metairie grocer has built a reputation since 1947 for its butcher counter, deli platters, and specialty Italian baked goods, including St. Joseph's bread, a heritage that dates back to founder Joseph Dorignac Jr.'s original Lower Garden District shop before the store relocated to Metairie in 1963, according to Biz New Orleans.
Attendees will find more than just the record-chasing board. The festival's report notes Italian wines, cocktails, and beer alongside delicacies from nearly a dozen local restaurants, plus Italian desserts and live entertainment throughout the evening.
A Record Built on Sicilian Roots
The antipasto attempt taps into a food category distinct from the mega charcuterie spreads that have grabbed headlines elsewhere in the country. Texas grocer Central Market set a Guinness World Record in September 2024 for the largest charcuterie board, assembling 1,000 pounds of cured meats, cheeses, fruits, and spreads on a 12-by-24-foot board in Austin, according to Austin Food Magazine. A year earlier, Florida catering brand Boarderie built a 769-pound, 20-by-14-foot charcuterie spread that took 40 staff members to hand-cut ingredients and arrange more than 1,000 individual food trays, as reported by Food Network. New Orleans' antipasto target is considerably smaller in scale, focused specifically on Italian cured meats, cheeses, olives, and marinated vegetables rather than the broader charcuterie category.
That focus on Italian tradition is no accident. New Orleans carries a distinct Sicilian-Italian legacy dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when more than 60,000 Italian immigrants, most from Sicily, settled in the lower French Quarter in a neighborhood that became known as Little Palermo, according to the American Italian Federation of the Southeast. That same wave of Sicilian immigration produced one of the city's most iconic sandwiches: the muffuletta, invented in 1906 at Central Grocery by Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Lupo, who piled Italian cured meats, cheeses, and olive salad onto round sesame bread, as detailed by PBS News.
St. Joseph Society's Fundraiser and Fall Calendar
Proceeds from Taste of Italy benefit the Italian American St. Joseph Society, the organization behind the record attempt. Founded in 1970 by Judge Anthony Russo and Joseph Cardenia to preserve Italian culture in the city, the group has grown to roughly 1,500 members and hosts the French Quarter's annual St. Joseph's Day parade, according to Visit New Orleans. The society structured Taste of Italy as an all-inclusive festival, meaning a single admission ticket covers all food and drink offerings from participating restaurants, per the group's Facebook page.
Sicilian immigrants also brought the tradition of St. Joseph's Day Altars to New Orleans in the late 19th century, a gesture of thanksgiving for relief from a medieval Sicilian famine that established a custom of food offerings, fava bean giveaways, and feasts still practiced across the region, according to The Italian American Podcast. Taste of Italy is not the society's only fall event; the group is scheduled to host its annual Bocce Bash Tournament on October 10 at the Italian American Bocce Club of Greater New Orleans in Metairie, just two days after the antipasto attempt.
The record attempt's location next to Caesars Casino places it in the middle of one of the French Quarter's biggest recent commercial makeovers. Caesars Entertainment completed a multi-year redevelopment valued between $325 million and $435 million to transform the former Harrah's New Orleans into Caesars New Orleans, adding a 340-room hotel tower and modernized hospitality spaces adjacent to the Quarter, according to RGGC. Whether the antipasto board actually breaks the current 92.6-pound, 32-foot record will depend on Guinness adjudicators, but organizers and Dorignac's have set the stage for a very large, very public attempt right in the heart of the city's Italian heritage.
