The Royale with Cheese

Few moments in cinema have made audiences look at fast food the same way again. In Pulp Fiction, the so-called “burger scene” comes early, when hitmen Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) casually discuss European fast food on their way to a job. Minutes later, the conversation morphs into one of the film’s most chilling - and strangely funny - acts of intimidation: Jules interrogating Brett over a Big Kahuna Burger, biting into it mid-threat, and washing it down with a stolen Sprite.

The burger here is more than a prop. Tarantino uses it to layer tone: absurd, conversational, and horrifying all at once. By having Jules praise Brett’s “tasty burger” with theatrical relish, the violence that follows feels even more surreal. It’s domestic comfort food weaponized as performance.

Behind the scenes, the burger’s role was partly practical. Tarantino invented the fictional Hawaiian-themed Big Kahuna Burger brand as a connective tissue across his films (it later reappears in From Dusk Till Dawn and Reservoir Dogs). The scene itself was shot at a small Los Angeles apartment set, where Jackson improvised some of his rhythm and inflection - turning simple lines into the kind of quotable menace that would define his career.

Fun fact: Samuel L. Jackson has admitted he was genuinely hungry while filming, and biting into the burger on camera gave the performance an extra layer of satisfaction. Travolta’s “Royale with Cheese” exchange was lifted from Tarantino’s fascination with cultural differences during his time in Amsterdam.

On release, audiences laughed, cringed, and leaned in closer. The burger scene crystallized Tarantino’s knack for fusing the banal with the brutal - dialogue about fast food sliding seamlessly into biblical vengeance. Nearly three decades later, Jules’s verdict still stands: it is indeed a tasty burger, though in his hands it became something far more memorable - a cinematic meal equal parts comedy, philosophy, and terror.