Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse Official D&D Cookbook Is a Culinary Adventure

I feel like we are in a golden age of geeky cookbooks. The last time I went into the bookstore, I found a whole pile of recent guides drawing inspiration from TV shows, video games, and general geekery—so many choices! The old adage states that you eat first with your eyes, so I picked the most visually bombastic of the options for my next review: Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse: An Official D&D Cookbook.

This is the second Dungeons & Dragons cookbook by the same authors—Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Michael Witwer, with the addition of Sam Witwer this time around—but Flavors of the Multiverse piqued my fancy more than the original Heroes’ Feast. My partner and I initially borrowed a copy through the library but ended up purchasing it for ourselves after enjoying the handful of recipes we tried!

Neverwinter Nectar—really tasty!

As I mentioned, this cookbook is pretty visually appealing. It boasts many full-page, full-color staged photographs of the foods and libations, which will make your mouth water. It also has a fair amount of text outside of the recipes, beginning with an introduction of the main premise of the book and a short description of each “verse” of the multiverse. It is then broken into sections based on locations—the Feywild, Rock of Bral, Ravenloft—that each have story snippets following a party of adventurers as they travel to these far-flung locations. These little features are amusing because they have very distinct voices for each character’s entries, and the whole thing reads very much like a bunch of friends playing D&D. And that’s not all: before each recipe is a little blurb that firmly sets the food or drink item into the world(s) of D&D. This is a cookbook that begs you to sit down and spend some time with it.

My partner and I tried six of the recipes.

• Neverwinter Nectar: This punch (pictured above) was one of my favorites! It’s cold and sweet and a nice sipping drink. I think it would be easy to make it nonalcoholic, if preferred—just sub out the wine for sparkling juice and nix the brandy.
• Goldenstars: I think I’d need a little practice to get this one right. I may have overmixed the dough, so my Goldenstars (pictured below) were a little dense and dry. The filling, however, was absolutely delicious, and I may have just eaten the extra straight from the bowl with a spoon. With a better pastry dough, they’d be awesome.
• Tavern Noodles: Another of my favorites! These are very simple but tasted great. Serve them with a side of roasted broccoli or asparagus and you’ll have a deceptively fancy-looking meal with not much effort.
• Kender Stumblenoodles: This is basically mac and cheese, so of course it tasted good. Homemade macaroni and cheese is obviously more effort than the easy box stuff, but it really is worth it—the flavor of the cheese is so much richer and satisfying. The only caveat is that it doesn’t reheat super well.
• Kender Loaf: Essentially bread pudding in a bread bowl, the Kender Loaf is a nice dessert recipe. Best served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or with some vanilla sauce.
• Quij’s Plate: This one tasted good, but the bottom of the pan burned pretty badly during the six minutes the eggs were cooking. If we made it again, we’d probably cook the eggs separately and/or increase some of the liquid called for.

Our Goldenstars turned out a little dry, but I definitely stuffed my face with the extra filling. Delicious!

There were a bunch of other recipes that sounded really good as well, and we’re looking forward to trying them at some point! Overall, I think this is a really solid cookbook. Good recipes, good food photography, and an obvious delight taken with the conceit of the book. It’s a love letter not only to cooking but also to Dungeons & Dragons. I would definitely recommend it to any foodie tabletop players!

Have any of you checked out Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse? Got any suggestions for which recipe to try next? Let me know in the comments!

And if the drinks in the Heroes’ Feast cookbooks aren’t enough for you, you should know that an official book of D&D cocktails and mocktails, Puncheons and Flagons, is coming in August 2024.