The Nightmare Before Dinner: Over 50 Hauntingly Good Dishes and Drinks to Die for

Craft a spooktacular spread inspired by iconic creepy films and characters, with over 50 deadly delicious food, dessert, and drink recipes.

Gather 'round the haunted table, where every day is Halloween! If you delight in ghoulish frights and movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and The Evil Dead; then get your goth on with over 50 recipes from Beetle House, the Halloween-inspired restaurant with locations in New York and Los Angeles that honors the legendary director Tim Burton and all his amazing films and creative characters.

The Nightmare Before Dinner includes sauces and dips for the recently deceased, eerie appetizers, sinister sides, cauldron companions like soups and salads, macabre mains, devilish desserts, and dark drinks and creepy cocktails. Indulge in a monstrous menu featuring:

• Beetle Pie, inspired by Beetlejuice - a brilliant-green homemade pistachio pudding with a crunchy chocolate crust that evokes the corpse-fed grass and rich soil of a graveyard, and seedy and sweet blackberry jam that mimics the texture of blood and bugs
• Edward Burger Hands, inspired by Edward Scissorhands - a juicy burger with a Sriracha cream sauce, stuffed with smoked bacon, fried egg, pepper jack cheese, and avocado; with a pair of scissors shoved through it to keep it closed
• Silence of the Lamb Chops, inspired by Silence of the Lambs - a tasty lamb dish with a buttery mushroom and apple sauce, made gory with splashes of raspberry glaze
• Cheshire Mac and Cheese, inspired by Alice in Wonderland - a sweet-and-spicy take on one of America's beloved comfort foods, served in a teacup
• The Fleet Street Martini, inspired by Sweeney Todd - a bright-red martini featuring Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey; pair with equally gory Love It Pot Pie

The Nightmare Before Dinner features food alternatives and substitutions for vegan and vegetarian diets for every recipe. The cookbook also includes full-color photography that creates a deliciously dark atmosphere and a bonus chapter on how to host goth-themed parties, so you can live the Halloween lifestyle every day of the year.

Also available by Zach Neil: Death for Dinner Cookbook: 60 Gorey-Good, Plant-Based Drinks, Meals, and Munchies Inspired by Your Favorite Horror Films

Author: Zach Neil
Publisher: Wellfleet Press
Published: 07/15/2025
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.30h x 6.80w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781577155256

About the Author
Zach Neil is an American entrepreneur, artist, and chef. He has been featured multiple times on the Food Network and has gained additional notoriety through his popular chains of themed restaurants, which have been featured on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Good Day New York, MSNBC, and ABC World News Tonight, among others. Zach combined his artistic pursuits with his culinary skills to create the eclectic, Halloween-themed Beetle House restaurants, which have broken media records in the restaurant space. His first cookbook, The Nightmare Before Dinner: Recipes to Die For, features all of the Beetle House recipes, plus a selection of brand new, never-before-seen dishes with seasonally inspired flavors and a dash of Gothic insanity. In addition to his restaurant franchises, Neil is considered an authority on pop-up bars and restaurants with his own television programming and lifestyle brands in the works. You can find Zach on Instagram @therealzachneil and learn more about the Beetle House restaurants at beetlehousela.com.