Game Of Thrones: Wintermelon is coming

SINGAPORE — Seeing as Game Of Thrones is all about appetites — sexual and political — it’s not surprising that food features prominently in the TV series and even more so in the books by George R R Martin, on which the show is based.

Fans who have salivated at Martin’s lavish descriptions of tables set for royal feasts are naturally inspired to hold their own Game Of Thrones-themed dinners. After all, it’s a set-up just begging to be executed — you can invite your friends to come in costume and share their meat and mead, and hopefully they won’t slaughter others while they’re bobbing their heads to the minstrels’ ditties.

To celebrate the premiere of last season’s Game Of Thrones, for example, 27-year-old marketing specialist Gareth Goh held his own feast at home. “I had a menu similar to what would be served at Joffrey’s wedding,” he said, with improvisations like “siew yoke” (roast pork) standing in for boar and wine bottles “decorated to look like Dornish wine”. The spread included salad, honeyed chicken, duck, lemon cakes and blackberries and cream.

“The cooking and deciding on the dishes were the easy part — George R R Martin loves his food, and his pages are filled with very detailed descriptions of what is served at these feasts,” Goh said. “My favourite part was going through the book and finding appropriate passages for each dish, and then writing them on a card and burning the edges so it looked like it came from that world.”

Copywriter Tang Wen En has plans to do the same. “The main thing about Game Of Thrones meals is that they are all so in-your-face. George R R Martin wasn’t going for subtlety when he described even simple things like oatbread with ‘bits of date, apple and orange’.

“I feel sick imagining Joffrey’s wedding dinner with 77 dishes and I want to see if I can serve such bombastic dishes as a full meal and not have anyone groaning,” the 28-year-old added.

But Tang is putting his own spin on the dishes: Instead of faithfully reproducing pigeon pie and cinnamon-baked apples, he’s going to serve up Dothrakimchi, Goose Bolton, Dracarysotto and Wintermelon Is Coming, “idiotically named dishes based on phrases or names in the series”, he said.

Then there is locally-run website Geek Crusade, which organised a ticketed Game Of Thrones dinner at No Menu restaurant last week. Geek Crusade’s co-founder Nicholas Yong said the sold-out event saw 53 people enjoying a menu specially drawn up by Chef Osvaldo Forlino, who was happy to play along. Activities included a Game Of Thrones trivia quiz.

“He claimed, ‘I went to Fort Canning and plucked all the greens and I saw this wild boar and I killed it, and that’s what I’m serving you now’,” Yong recounted. Starting at S$95 per head, there was also a summer green salad, mushroom soup with snails and pear poached in wine. Several people showed up in elaborate costumes: There was a Daenerys, a Khal Drogo, a Littlefinger, a Euron Greyjoy and a couple dressed as the Lannisters.

“I accidentally hit (Cersei Lannister) and she looked at me and said, ‘Be careful. I’m the mother of the King’,” Yong chuckled. And even though the attendees started out as strangers, “they were all getting to know one another and geeking out together”, Yong said. “I think it’s a really nice thing to have a nice meal and talk to people who share your interest.”

Geek Crusade has more dinners with themes like Hannibal and Downton Abbey planned as part of a Dinner Is Coming series, but because their Game Of Thrones event was so successful, they said they will be repeating it one more time on May 5, for waitlisted people who didn’t manage to snag tickets to the first event.

Are you hungry yet?