LONDON — It takes a strong stomach to be a fan of “Game of Thrones,” a blood-soaked saga set in a brutal fantasy kingdom.
It also takes a strong imagination to design a mouth-watering menu based on the television show. Chef Jamie Hazeel has done it, and he 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, punningly titled “All Men Must Dine,” opened Friday in London to mark the DVD release of Season 4 of the HBO series. During three nights, fans chosen from 12,000 competition entrants were served a 10-course meal in surroundings inspired by a council chamber at King’s Landing, capital of the program’s Seven Kingdoms.
Hazeel, co-owner of catering company The Wandering Chef, is also a fan, and has let his imagination run free for a menu that draws on medieval recipes and dishes mentioned in the TV 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, one of several dishes on the menu rich in fruits and spices.
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 dinner invitation warned that the meal is not suitable for vegetarians. No kidding. It’s a riot of fish, flesh and fowl, including pigeon pie, a “dinosaur Scotch egg” — it’s really from an emu, and enormous — and a roast suckling pig on a pyre.
Dessert is bone-marrow crème brulée, served in a real bone dripping with blood-red sauce.
“We wanted the food to be really theatrical,” Hazeel said.
A marble-clad former Masonic temple — incongruously located inside a Victorian-era London hotel — were lit with candles and adorned with the flags of “Game of Thrones” clans Baratheon and Lannister to serve the feast. Guests were also treated to a knight, a contortionist, live music and a pair of wandering jesters singing a jaunty ditty titled “Incest is Best.”
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, said his guests had nothing to fear.
“We have a lot of surprises in store, but they will leave safely,” she said.
