This Eagles tailgate serves up high-end cuisine for a good cause. Even Robert De Niro stopped by.

For this night’s menu, Dylan Marck cooked T-bone steaks, Ibérico pork chops, and goat chops. His co-chef, Ian Owens, pitched in with roasted Brussels sprouts, drumsticks, and crab cakes.

No, this wasn’t in one of Philadelphia’s acclaimed restaurants. This meal was taking place in Lot M, outside Lincoln Financial Field, for a captive audience of best friends and Eagles fans ahead of the Birds’ prime-time matchup against the Washington Commanders last month.

“I’ve always said, I eat better in a South Philly parking lot than I do anywhere else,” said Matt Elmer, a frequent tailgater.

Before Marck started running the show on his own, he was a reluctant tailgater. Jessica Blackwell, Marck’s girlfriend, said he’d have to be coerced into showing up early and helping to lock down a spot or to get out of the car on a cold day.

But in 2021, Marck and some of his friends broke off and started their own tailgate, headlined by his creative cuisine, and have since created a massive community of tailgaters and Birds fans who come back week after week — plus a few celebrity guests, including Robert De Niro and former Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this year. And with crowds that can reach 100 to 150 people, he no longer needs to worry about locking down just one parking spot — Marck’s tailgate now stretches across six spots.

“He’s still here. He’s going to be here until we probably die.”

“For me, this is my really only creative outlet, because I’m a lawyer,” said Marck, who lives in Newark, Del. “I try to go nuts. We typically look at who [the Eagles are] playing, and then if anybody’s coming who doesn’t typically come, we call them the honored guest, and so we’ll do something for them.”

The most famous of those was “Rohan-fest,” which honored Rohan Singh, a longtime friend from Eagles Twitter who traveled all the way from Auckland, New Zealand, to go to a Birds game in 2022.

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That’s when Owens hopped on board as the second chef. He came to his first tailgate to meet Singh, and loved the community so much that he asked the next week if he could bring a grill of his own.

“[Owens] said, ‘Oh, I really want to come back and cook,’” Marck said. “I was like, why not? We’ve got plenty of people, and we couldn’t shake him. He’s still here. He’s going to be here until we probably die.”

Now, Marck and Owens collaborate on the menu each week. Elmer mixes drinks and Lauren Linarello, the group’s baker, brings in desserts and other fun treats. Erin Rogers organizes the group’s charity drives — including last month’s canned food drive ahead of Thanksgiving, supporting the Glassboro Food Bank.

Materials can cost him up to $900 each week, but there’s no entry fee to eat at Marck’s tailgate — “We’ll feed anybody.” Instead, people looking to contribute to the community participate in the food and toy drives Rogers hosts.

“Dylan and Ian and a lot of us do stuff and don’t ask for anything,” Rogers said. “They don’t ask for a dime. I’m like, here’s how you guys can contribute: We feed you, now you feed them.”

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Word spreads about the tailgate primarily through X, where most of the group met back when it was still called Twitter. Rogers and Brooke Logan were celebrating their two-year friendiversary, after the two longtime online acquaintances met in real life at the tailgate two years earlier. The core group of around 20 that comes back each week now goes to weddings, plays, and brunch together, taking their online friendship offline.

“I moved here a few years ago, and I had a lot of friends who were around the area, and family around the area, but didn’t have Philly friends until I just showed up at a tailgate,” Owens said. “The first person I saw was Bex [Burroughs]. And I was just standing in the corner, and Bex just came up to me like, ‘Hi, I’m Bex, I’m on Twitter. Do I follow you?’

“People started talking to me and made me feel really welcome, and now I’ve been around the group for so long, and so has everyone else.”

Since they’ve started tailgating, they’ve developed a number of their own traditions and superstitions. They use the same speaker, playing the same playlist (although not in the same order). Before every game, Marck has to pull a Golden Monkey from the beer backpack — he doesn’t always drink, but he always pulls out the Golden Monkey.

“Food, that’s the foundational building block. Everybody has to eat. Regardless of who you are, what you do, why you do it, you have to eat.”

There are remnants of confetti all over the lot from past playoff moments. After tailgating for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stop at the Linc, some of the group started making Eagles-themed friendship bracelets, which they trade and distribute in the lot.

But the centerpiece is always the food, and Marck’s favorite tradition is the custom menu.

He has experimented with pressed duck, which is served in just a handful of restaurants across the U.S. but is something he’s already served to De Niro. He’s made bone marrow, deconstructed lasagna, and baked clams, and is always pushing his skills further.

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Marck has no formal chef training. Everything he’s learned is through experimentation, picking up ideas from old cookbooks or Anthony Bourdain episodes. Cooking has been his main creative outlet since college, and he’s constantly looking for new and interesting recipes or techniques to try out.

“Food, that’s the foundational building block,” Marck said. “Everybody has to eat. Regardless of who you are, what you do, why you do it, you have to eat. I think being able to share that, or break bread, or however you want to call it, establishes a level of trust and companionship that you may not otherwise get.”

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His friends will try anything Marck makes, even if it looks a bit strange at first, in between competitive flip cup tournaments and great conversation.

“There’s never been a time where the tailgate broke my heart,” Elmer said. “Those teams do.”

“We might lose the game, but we always win the tailgate,” Logan agreed.