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It also takes a strong imagination to design a mouth-watering menu based on the television show. Chef Jamie Hazeel has done it, and says creating delicacies such as traitor’s tongue and smoked serpent was a challenge.
“Python is a bit of a tricky meat,” Hazeel said, deftly slicing a long piece of pinkish flesh. “So we’re using smoked eel instead.”
A temporary restaurant, “All Men Must Dine”, opens in London on Friday to mark the DVD release of season four of the HBO series. Over three nights, fans chosen from 12 000 competition entrants will be served a 10-course meal in surroundings inspired by King’s Landing, capital of the programme’s Seven Kingdoms.
Hazeel, co-owner of catering company The Wandering Chef, draws on medieval dishes mentioned in the series.
“Honeyed fowl is a big thing in the show, the taste of luxury,” he said. “I wanted to recreate what I thought the taste of honeyed fowl would be.”
The result is honey and lemon-glazed quail, stuffed with apricots, almonds and sultanas. Other courses “may be slightly off-putting to a modern audience”, he admitted, including honey-fried locusts and a dish of poached calf tongue titled “the lies of Tyrion Lannister”.
The invitation warned the meal is not suitable for vegetarians. It’s a riot of fish, flesh and fowl, including pigeon pie, a “dinosaur Scotch egg” – from an emu – and a roast suckling pig on a pyre.
Dessert is bone-marrow creme brulee, served in a real bone dripping with blood-red sauce.
“We wanted the food to be really theatrical,” Hazeel said.
Based on novels by George RR Martin, Game of Thrones has won a mix of fan adulation and critical praise with its blend of fantasy, realpolitik, violence and sex.
A marble-clad former Masonic temple – incongruously located inside a Victorian-era London hotel – has been adorned with the flags of Game of Thrones clans Baratheon and Lannister to serve the feast. Feasts in the Game of Thrones universe don’t always end well – as anyone who has seen the infamous “Red Wedding” episode can attest. But Lalie Jacout, Hazeel’s business partner, says his guests have nothing to fear.
“We have a lot of surprises in store, but they will leave safely,” she said.