Roasted legs, Peking-style whole bodies, edible insects, tiny organs for dead rats, edible snails, raw space whale meat, and more, you name it, Janice Poon has created it. Known for her work on Hannibal, the genius Poon has also lent her clever food-stylist hand to Star Trek, Hemlock Grove, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and more. In short, she’s become Hollywood’s first phone call when any series or movie needs something horrible in the culinary department… but also delicious and sometimes downright beautiful. Poon recently sat down with Great Big Story to talk about her adventures creating food that straddles the line between disgusting and divine for Hannibal and beyond.
Being a food stylist involves many talents. So it’s lucky that Janice Poon has been an art director, a caterer, a cookbook author, a graphic novelist, a sculptor, a couturier, and more. All of these different skill sets come together to create the incredible and absolutely fantastical meals Poon puts together. Poon notes that she loves the reading and research part of the creative process. And after that, she creates a quick sketch to communicate how she plans for her food to look. Of course, Poon’s quick sketch is a whole work of art, especially when it comes to her plans for Hannibal. You can see more of Poon’s planning on her blog.
Things never go exactly as planned though, but that’s Poon’s genius. She’s always ready to move onto the next plan. In the video, Poon walks us through how to create raw hamburger meat from completely innocent ingredients like sweet potato, flour, and beets. A little addition for texture here. A little sprinkle of something for color there, and like magic, raw meat that’s disgusting and delicious. Yum! For health and dietary restriction reasons, this is truly a superpower for a Hollywood stylist.
Next, Dutch-processed cocoa, spirulina powder, icing sugar, and white food coloring become mold before our eyes—furry but yummy. It seems better than the alternative, toothpaste. Of course, for blood we need to keep corn syrup on hand. Poon surely had to use more than a little of that on Hannibal. And the true magic item of food styling is oil, she shares, just a drip, and everything looks juicy and delicious.
Poon, of course, takes the time to share a little bit about her Hannibal adventures. Fans of the show will already know of Poon, of course, because Hannibal wouldn’t be Hannibal without his food. She reveals that Mads Mikkelsen was an incredibly adventurous eater. In fact, he wanted Poon to serve up real lung, brain, and liver right from the beginning. And together they cut loose.
To finish Hannibal‘s entrees, although, of course, we can’t say for sure who the chef is, Poon created a steaming version of Bedelia’s leg. She used a pork marrow bone for the thigh and lamb shank at the ankle end. Of course, this leg is much grander than it would have been at scale. But that’s cinematic (and Hannibal) magic.
Poon concludes by saying, especially when you’re making meals for horror, it’s important that the food, like the characters, teeter on a knife’s edge. Is it horrible? Is it delicious? No, it’s horrible and delicious. Someone get Janice Poon a making of horror meals series, stat! In the meanwhile, you can buy Poon’s Hannibal cookbook, Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook, today and embark on a twistedly incredible supper of your own.