The Murder Mystery Dinner Is Back — and Deadlier Than Ever

At restaurants, wineries, and even on a train, these dining experiences are to die for.

By Kristy Alpert

Published on April 1, 2026

I was watching my son pick a balsamic drizzled tomato off his bruschetta and pop it into his mouth when I heard a glass hit the floor, followed by a loud thud. The man we had just been laughing with about the proper cherry count for a Shirley Temple was now laying on the floor behind our table. 

Dead. 

To be fair, that same man died twice that evening — there were only two actors on payroll from the Murder Mystery Company — but he was believable every time and had us gasping in shock from the basement of Warrenton, Virginia’s historic Denim & Pearls restaurant.

Murders are happening more regularly at Denim & Pearls, especially as demand for a seat at the restaurant’s three-course murder mystery dinner continues to rise. The themed dinner is offered once or twice a month between September and March, and it’s not just small-town Virginia that’s developed a craving for these homicidal happenings, Americans everywhere are hungry for more. A 2026 dining trends report from OpenTable found that 48% of Americans are more likely to visit restaurants when they’re hosting special experiences or themed events like murder mysteries.

Credit the trend to the popularity of true crime podcasts, sinister reality shows, or thriller TV series, whatever sparked the interest has officially unleashed a ‘90s-era tradition that had almost died out. Back then, murder mystery dinners were a private matter, sold by the box with cassette tapes and sample menus stacked alongside cue cards to doll out to dinner party guests. Today, the dinners have become much more elaborate, bespoke even, often personally written to pair with a restaurant’s menu and aesthetic, as was the case for two-Michelin-starred restaurant Jônt in Washington D.C., which hosted its first murder mystery dinner in late 2024. 

“I think there has always been an interest in this genre of event and concept,” says Andrew Elder, general manager and sommelier at Jônt. “Since the days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, to games and movies like Clue. Now with murder mystery entering the game show era — a la The Traitors — a wider audience is able to discover how fun and intriguing it is to be placed at the end of your seat trying to ‘solve a case’ while also enjoying a great meal.”

Elder admits the idea was originally suggested as a joke and a way to increase covers during the week of Halloween — historically a slow time span for tasting menu restaurants. It quickly turned into a way to curate an experience for guests as they discovered the chef’s menu while uncovering clues and opening their senses. The first event sold out two weeks after releasing the marketing and reservations. The Halloween murder mystery dinner is now an annual event. Elder writes the script and orchestrates the evening among an all-too-eager staff of potential suspects and victims.

It was the Peacock reality show The Traitors that inspired the first murder-themed solstice dinner at Heirloom Fine Foods in Omaha, Nebraska, and it was the dinner’s massive success (and overwhelming demand) that inspired an immediate repeat evening. Thirty guests — some traitors, some faithfuls — competed for the chance to win a gift card to the Heirloom Market at Millwork as they made their way through a series of small missions and a multi-course menu (bone marrow dumplings, scotch eggs, Scottish scallops, etc.) with wine and whiskey pairings.

Wineries and breweries have even begun incorporating a touch of murder into their tasting rooms, like the “scandalous” Bridgerton-themed dinners at Walnut Springs Winery in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the monthly massacres at Barrel 33 in Sandpoint, Idaho. The Arch Ray Resort in Fredericksburg, Texas, even turned its new distillery launch into a murder mystery, complete with shady investors and rival distillers planted throughout the room. The evening ended with an exclusive first taste of Paul Bee Distillery’s new Madeira Cask Bourbon. 

In California, the Wine Train Murder Mystery dinner has long taken its cues from Agatha Christie novels, as the signature Napa Valley Wine Train event has rolled out of the station on select Saturday evenings for more than 25 years. The wine list is impeccable, and the menu is often described as “to die for” from the train’s repeat guests, many of whom have begun to plan their own group experiences over at the Napa Valley Marriott. The hotel began offering private murder mystery dinners for groups in 2025.

A lakeside lodge in Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest was recently selected as an unsuspecting host for a pop-up murder mystery weekend that will take place later this spring. A group of friends bought out the entire Suttle Lodge property for the weekend and has murky plans of hosting their own summer-camp-esque multi-day mystery. Over in Cape May, New Jersey, though, the details are less murky, as Congress Hall lets guests book a room to be part of the annual three-day Murder Mystery Weekend.

Murder mystery dinners are rampant across the United States, and the trend shows no evidence of slowing down. Americans are loving the chance to commit and solve fictional crimes without any legal consequences, and it doesn’t hurt that, even if the case remains a mystery, dinner is solved.