Gourmet Gaming Combines Our Two Favorite Things: Video Games and Food

Screenshot of Gourmet Gaming's website

Gourmet Gaming's real life version of "The Meat" in classic Sega video game Golden Axe

If you would like to take your video game experience to the next meta-level and, say, concoct a red potion similar to the one Link drinks in The Legend of Zelda, Gourmet Gaming is right up your alley. As both gamer and cook, creator Daniella Zelli takes the foods that exist in popular video games and recreates real life versions of them. Or, as she says by way of introduction: "What's even better [than playing video games and eating] is eating the food from the game I'm playing while I'm playing it."

So far, Zelli has almost 40 recipes, all inspired by video games old and new. Her first entry is "possibly the most famous case of food in a video game ... obviously the cake from Portal." Obviously.

For the uninitiated, the cake from Portal is essentially a MacGuffin of sorts: the player is tasked with completing a series of puzzles, with the promise of a cake as reward. The cake is a lie: there is no such reward, though the recipe for the cake actually is hidden as an Easter Egg within the game for players so inclined to go hunting for it. That recipe, however, calls premade cake mix. As "this is Gourmet Gaming after all," Zelli's version of the cake is made from scratch and topped with maraschino cherries.

The recipes are even better from here. From the enormously addicting Skyrim, Zelli has recipes for the Black-Briar Mead drink and sweet rolls. Sonic the Hedgehog's favorite food, chili hot dogs, also are brought to life, as well as Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake from the World of Warcraft.

Our personal favorite so far, though, might be the valiant attempt to actualize the rations that Solid Snake eats throughout Metal Gear Solid. Zelli's version is a meat and vegetable stew crammed in a tin can; she thought this would be "full of the right stuff that would 'sustain Snake to help him fight" against, say, Psycho Mantis.

Fight or no fight, the stew is perfect for the cold nights we've had lately. Well, almost perfect: as she points out, you need to nosh on this while hiding under a cardboard box to truly recreate the Metal Gear experience. And don't be surprised if you suddenly find yourself in a warehouse in Zanzibar Land.