Dungeons & Dragons Flavors of the Multiverse–Cookbook explores the foods of the realms

Review by C.J. Bunce

Diehard Dungeons & Dragons gamers take note: Heroes’ Feast: Flavors of the Multiverse–An Official D&D Cookbook (available now here at Amazon) is practically its own game supplement. The writing team and chef from the first official cookbook, 2020’s Heroes’ Feast are back filling in gaps in the Forgotten Realms and beyond with anecdotes and more, including giving names to the characters sitting around the table in the first book. Seventy-five new recipes join the 80 in the original, all geared to your favorite characters, creatures, and places, from Owlbears, Elves, and Fey to comfort food and tavern fare and drinks from across the Blood Sea of Istar.

The D&D settings, character banter, and location nuances from years of the “world’s greatest roleplaying game” are the Usual Suspects listed on the cover. But the cover credit should go to the chef that didn’t make the cover, Adam Ried, and photographer Ray Kachatorian. A cookbook that doesn’t give cover credit to the cook seems wrong somehow. But it’s a book every D&D fan will want. We gave two of the recipes from Kendermore a try. Learn more about that and get a preview of some recipes you’ll find inside the new cookbook below.

This is the rare cookbook that leans so much into its tie-in elements that you could just read the tale that connects the recipes. Artwork from Simon Taylor, Marisa Kwek, and Kelly Booth will pull you into your favorite realm.

As a sequel of sorts, this is worth a comparison to the original. In Heroes’ Feast: The Official D&D Cookbook, still in print and available here, the writers say their focus was elevating your gaming with food. The new book is attempting at some differentiation, in addition to 75 new dishes and concoctions it wants you to make food an essential part of your game night. You need to eat–might as well eat what your character would eat on game night. The book also switches from the original D&D cookbook’s focus on foods based on races to foods from different locations in the D&D universe.

Most of the dishes are affordable with easy to gather ingredients. The meals also are the kind of fare for a general audience, with fewer prestige meals. The book also features desserts for the game crowd, easy sharables like Goldenstars and vanilla buns–and Tavern Crickets. Plus several drink recipes.

For this review I made two dishes from selected from the Kendermore section of the book. First I made the Kender Stumblenoodles. The book is organized into food served in seven locales: The Yawning Portal, The Rock of Bral, Solamnia, Lost in Realmspace, Ravenloft, Sigil, and The Feywild, with Kendermore within Solamnia. I wasn’t disappointed. The book includes elaborate fantasy introductions in each section and a paragraph leading into each recipe, all “in-world.”

These are, like other tie-in cookbooks, altered recipes from your favorite, age-old “staple” cookbooks. The secret to the Kender Stumblenoodles is adding in shredded gruyere cheese in the final step. The cheesy white sauce will be familiar to anyone who enjoys a homemade macaroni and cheese, with this version kicked up a bit with some paprika and cayenne. It’s a time-intensive dish but well worth the hour of whisking to get to the stringy gruyere and bread crumb top. On seconds I wish I had added some crushed potato chips to the top–that’s the good thing about cookbooks: you should tweak them to your taste. I swapped the fusilli or rotini for a mix of cellentani and small shells. I highly recommend using the cellentani noodles. The dish doubles as a great fungilli.

Next up, also from Kendermore, was trying out the recipe for Kender Loaf. It is a bread pudding made from a loaf of French or Italian bread. I used Italian, and I increased the cinnamon and sugar by mixing some in with the egg-soaked, pulled-up and baked bread, carefully carved from the crust to leave a long bread bowl. I also nixed the raisins. This would be good with or without. The photo showed it served warm with ice cream, and I followed suit. It tasted great and was easy to make in less than 2 hours total.