A non-negligible portion of creatures in D&D worlds live underground.  Dwarves, drow, goblins, orcs, kobolds, and monsters of all types can live their entire lives without ever seeing the sun.

So I wonder, what kinds of foods do they have?  We've heard of mushrooms, and rothe (cave bison), but what else is there to eat?

Many kinds of fish and crustaceans live in underground streams; much like surface civilizations, many Underdark inhabitants can do worse than build settlements near bodies of water.

Troglobites, or animals which live perpetually underground, have extremely low metabolisms to conserve energy, and can go for months without eating.

It wouldn't take much effort to 'farm' such creatures, and even a single piece of bait can keep a colony living for a very long time.  Insects in particular are incredibly common.

Salt is found in underground deposits, and is probably as ubiquitous as a seasoning and ingredient as it is in surface world communities.

Mushrooms would be a sort of "everyman food" in Underdark settlements: widely available, fast-growing, and come in plenty of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes.  Yeast can be used as fermentation for alcoholic beverages, and even make certain kinds of sauces.  Yeast can also be used as a leavening agent for bread, but it also requires dough, which is obtained via crops which cannot grow without sunlight.

Alcoholic beverages would be rather common.  Beer especially so, but wine would be unheard of due to the requirement of fruits.

Fruits and vegetables would be almost unheard of except in communities very close to the surface world.  In some cases, they might not even be edible to Underdark inhabitants (whose bodies might not even be adapted to handle such foods).

In regards to cooking, this would be tough: wood, one of the most common pre-Industrial burning agents, doesn't grow underground.  There's coal, but the smoke generated by its fires is incredibly dangerous in an underground space with stagnant air.  How would Underdark creatures cook their food, if they bother to do so at all?  Natural steam vents?

What are your thoughts?

I'd imagine raiding the surface and using that as trade goods might form a substantial part of the dungeon diet. There aren't any real world comparisons though, nothing grows underground. Algae, rare fungi on guano, and not much else. Vermin, lost animals, lost vermin, beyond that it's scarce fish and the other denizens.

I'd say this is a place where fictional foods would need to be used extensively. Dwarves might be able to discern the proximity of valuable metal veins by the colour of the light from glowing moss and use them as a delicacy to celebrate the first strike, leading to many a hallucination, goblins leave specially prepared noxious drippings on the soil of the world above and harvest the rich roots when the unnatural plant grows, trolls have a saprophytic relationship with water elementals inhabiting certain damp crevices, the one nourishing the other.

Cooking: lava of course. Or certain compost heaps that reach a peculiarily high temperature in their depths.

Thanks for the link.

Any Dwarf knows that the only acceptable heat source is magma.

The magma's not a bad idea, and the lava itself would make a decent light source.  I don't recall ever seeing this in fantasy before, but why not have a 'farm' underground.  Artificial light could be made available either through lava flows, phosphorescence, or just plain magic.

Look at extreme life ecologies? Here's a link to several such ecologies, some completely independent from solar energy. I like the oceanic thermal vents, methane seeps, and undersea brine pools myself... Something about Drow chillaxing with an order of methane mussels and worm frittes with mayonnaise dipping sauce by the warm glow of a "fire ice" brazier works for me.

California academy exhibit of extreme life on earth

I smell a "Man vs. Food" episode coming together!

JG

OK here's some menu items for the distinguished duergar or hobgoblin eatery of your choice (very slightly Arduin inspired and also yoinking ideas from the thread so far).
 
The Usual (2 sp)
Giant bat jerky, seasonal veggies ('shrooms & cave moss), and a hearty mushroom ale.
Traditional duergar rock-flour cakes as dessert (Note: inadvisable for non-dwarves)
 
Roast Spider Shanks (2) with mushroom bisque and beer(3 sp)
Cooked over a fire of rothe dung until the ichor is sizzling.
 
Snails fried in truffle oil (4 sp).
Followed by a dessert of juiciest Crickets in imported surface honey.
 
Hillbilly Special (5 sp)
Filet of sewer alligator (raw, pickled), with mushrooms. Selection of especially sweet mushrooms for dessert, plus hooch made from fermented tree-roots.
 
Fisherman's Basket (8 sp).
2 Blind Cave Fish, steamed, plus 2 raw frshwater oysters and a bowl of black cave algae soup.
Cave-fisher egg & rothe milk pudding for dessert.
 
Cave Lizard Ham & Lichen Omelette (1 gp)
The lizard provides the ham, the eggs and even partially digests the lichen for you!
Comes with a mushroom ale, and lizard egg meringue to finish.
 
Scorpion surprise (2 gp)
Steamed Cave Scorpions (3). Served with our traditional scorpion-venom wine - elves need not apply. Scorpion-shaped toffees for dessert, if you get that far.
 
One with the ooze (3 gp):
Boiled whole juvenile black pudding, with side order of earthworm 'fries' (crunchy-cooked).
Gello for dessert (slightly tart due to admixture of giant ant vinegar to kill the stinging cells). Blood-sweetened in your choice of red or green.
 
Adventurer Pie (10 gp)
Made from surface dwarf, elf or human - as available.
Served with an imported surface wine.
 
KFD (Kentucky Fried Drow) - (50 gold; feeds 6 medium-sized creatures) - freshly caught dark elf, salted (rock salt) and cooked over coal. 11 secret herbs and spices imported from the surface.
Side order of Earthworm fries. Followed with a small rothe-milk cheesecakes and Assassin Vine berry wine (a dark elf vintage).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;626712OK here's some menu items for the distinguished duergar or hobgoblin eatery of your choice (very slightly Arduin inspired and also yoinking ideas from the thread so far).

Fucking awesome.

Quote from: The Butcher;626758Fucking awesome.

Agreed.

Hobgoblin Hotberry Cordial
This is a potent alcoholic beverage with many reputed beneficial effects besides giving a good buzz, including rejuvenation and granting tremendous strength, some say.

It's made from the distilled and fermented glittering fruit of the leering carbuncle tree which grows near to sources of great heat underground. When the tides of the earth rise and the tree is immolated, its multifaceted silver fruit detach and rise above the lava flow, dancing on the confined thermals, swelling to double their size.

Hobgoblin brewers lean out over the molten rock and capture the elusive berries with a combination of tethered but short lived bats and stiff wire nets. It is essential to keep the brew at a red hot temperature throughout the brewing and distilling process, right up until the bottling, for if it cools down too much it transmutes alchemically into a potent interplanar beacon which draws beings from the nether hells to partake of anything in the vicinity. Whether this is a property of the fruit itself or something the hobgoblins stir in for zest is not known.

Real talk:  Play some Dwarf Fortress.  It's a bear to pick up (the interface is... organic), but it's a look at (one vision of) underground ecology without peer.

This thread is crazy... in a really good way!

RPGPundit

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;626712OK here's some menu items for the distinguished duergar or hobgoblin eatery of your choice (very slightly Arduin inspired and also yoinking ideas from the thread so far).
 
The Usual (2 sp)
Giant bat jerky, seasonal veggies ('shrooms & cave moss), and a hearty mushroom ale.
Traditional duergar rock-flour cakes as dessert (Note: inadvisable for non-dwarves)
 
Roast Spider Shanks (2) with mushroom bisque and beer(3 sp)
Cooked over a fire of rothe dung until the ichor is sizzling.
 
Snails fried in truffle oil (4 sp).
Followed by a dessert of juiciest Crickets in imported surface honey.
 
Hillbilly Special (5 sp)
Filet of sewer alligator (raw, pickled), with mushrooms. Selection of especially sweet mushrooms for dessert, plus hooch made from fermented tree-roots.
 
Fisherman's Basket (8 sp).
2 Blind Cave Fish, steamed, plus 2 raw frshwater oysters and a bowl of black cave algae soup.
Cave-fisher egg & rothe milk pudding for dessert.
 
Cave Lizard Ham & Lichen Omelette (1 gp)
The lizard provides the ham, the eggs and even partially digests the lichen for you!
Comes with a mushroom ale, and lizard egg meringue to finish.
 
Scorpion surprise (2 gp)
Steamed Cave Scorpions (3). Served with our traditional scorpion-venom wine - elves need not apply. Scorpion-shaped toffees for dessert, if you get that far.
 
One with the ooze (3 gp):
Boiled whole juvenile black pudding, with side order of earthworm 'fries' (crunchy-cooked).
Gello for dessert (slightly tart due to admixture of giant ant vinegar to kill the stinging cells). Blood-sweetened in your choice of red or green.
 
Adventurer Pie (10 gp)
Made from surface dwarf, elf or human - as available.
Served with an imported surface wine.
 
KFD (Kentucky Fried Drow) - (50 gold; feeds 6 medium-sized creatures) - freshly caught dark elf, salted (rock salt) and cooked over coal. 11 secret herbs and spices imported from the surface.
Side order of Earthworm fries. Followed with a small rothe-milk cheesecakes and Assassin Vine berry wine (a dark elf vintage).

Love it! LOL

Thanks guys! Hope I haven't side tracked the actual ecology discussion too much...carry on...

Actually your menu was made of awesome sauce and probably has done more to ground the conversation with practical creations than anything else.

At some point one has to stop with the research and just create!

Here, let me try:

'Fire Ice' is a (real world) natural phenomena of crystalized methane. It looks like ice, but isn't cold to the touch, however it may be lit like regular methane gas (it's mentioned in my above link, by methane leaks).

Since access to the solar ecosystem is at a premium -- but magical radiation is prevalent according to some drow texts -- if there are any plants at all, they would shift to magical radiation synthesis. Let's call this... arcanosynthesis.

(If you wanna Sci Fi it, call this arcane radiation instead x-ray or gamma radiation before it's scientifically understood, and thus have gammasynthesis or something.)

Arcanosynthesis collects radiant energy and converts it into sugars. However, along with sugars it also charges them, leaving them with a tingly aftertaste. Further this charged latent energy retards bacterial growth, unlike natural oceanic vents or sulfur pools with their bacterial ecosystems. But fungi absolutely love this competition vacuum near arcane radiation. Thus plants with arcanosynthesis ferment quickly, often on the vine.

Thus arcanosynthesis fruit tends to be partially fermented, thus effervescent (carbon dioxide) or alcohol filled, and tingly.

So a common dessert is 'whiskey pear' flambé with 'glitterberry' soda drink. Whiskey pear is mixed with fire ice in a pan and lit at the table, meanwhile a glass of bioluminescent and effervescent 'glitterberry' juice is poured. Both leave a tingling aftertaste, but together it's like Pop Rocks on the tongue.