Marcel Winatschek

The Kaleesi

Somewhere along the way, pop culture stopped being something you just watched and became something you ate. Mathew Ramsey at PornBurger made a Game of Thrones burger called the Kaleesi, and it’s built with Welsh cheddar studded with mustard seeds and shiitake bacon.

The burger is weirdly committed. It’s not just slapping a dragon name onto something—the cheddar is actually red dragon cheddar from Wales, the bacon is shiitake. Which is what separates a theme burger from an actual burger, I guess.

I don’t watch Game of Thrones anymore—stopped after season four or five depending on my mood—but I’d eat this burger. Not because Daenerys is on it, but because the components sound good. The seeded cheddar, the shiitake. The Game of Thrones thing is just window dressing.

There’s something funny about seeing how franchise IP filters down into the everyday. A character gets reduced to a burger, and the burger is probably better than the source material by this point. Food is where pop culture makes sense. You can actually taste it.