Often the highlight of a stay at Biltmore, dinner featured between six and ten courses, including soup, fish, entrée, roast or relevé, game and salad, dessert, and coffee to aid digestion. Meals included a combination of store-bought delicacies and the home-grown bounty of estate farms.

Dining at George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate was a grand, multi-course affair reflecting the "Gilded Age" obsession with French haute cuisine and self-sufficiency. The estate’s own farms, gardens, and dairies provided fresh ingredients, including Jersey cow milk, poultry, and garden vegetables. A typical formal dinner in the Banquet Hall might include seven to ten courses, starting with oysters or caviar, followed by clear consommé, poached fish with hollandaise, and a heavy meat roast like venison or beef tenderloin. Desserts were elaborate, ranging from petits fours to ornate jellies and imported exotic fruits like pineapples, which were grown in the estate's conservatories. Breakfast was often a lighter but still sophisticated spread of eggs, kippers, and fruit, served in the sun-drenched Breakfast Room. The Vanderbilts were known for their refined palates, frequently pairing their meals with fine wines imported from Europe, creating a lifestyle that rivaled the royal courts of the Old World.