Sujata Day and Mike Haracz heat things up with a Dungeons & Dragons-themed cooking show

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Dungeons & Dragons players still have to eat.

Chef and content creator Mike Haracz knows all about that, and he and writer/director/actor Sujata Day have just the thing for hungry players as well as the rest of us.

The pair cohost a D&D-themed cooking show titled “Heroes’ Feast” in which they prepare dishes from a cookbook based on the popular role-playing game, with the assistance of various guests.

The cookbook (also titled “Heroes’ Feast”) came about, Haracz told CNN, as part of a partnership with Wizards of the Coast. As a “super nerd” who is way into the game, he was very into it.

Day told CNN she came to it a bit differently.

“I did not grow up playing Dungeons and Dragons,” she said. “About six years ago, a group of girlfriends and I got together. They came to me – they’re all actresses – and they said, ‘Hey, we were thinking of learning how to play Dungeons and Dragons.’”

Not only did they play, but they recorded a 10-episode YouTube series “Girls, Guts, Glory” in which they dressed up as D&D characters.

So when Wizards of the Coast approached her last year about co-hosting the cooking show, it wasn’t totally out of left field.

“I was like, ‘I gotta be honest, I have not played Dungeons and Dragons since Girls, Guts, Glory,’” said Day, whose film “Definition Please” debuted to critical acclaim in 2020. “And also I have no idea how to cook. I’m not a cook.”

Her lack of experience was actually what the show producers were looking for, and she and Haracz play well off of each other.

Haracz said the show is an enjoyable one even for those who aren’t into “D & D.”

“What I think is so fun is that the way the show works is, people will realize, ‘Wait a second, I can do that,’” he said. “That’s easy.”

The pair are so into it that Day says they gave themselves a “ship [relationship] name: Mikejata.”

She said they found their rhythm, despite that when they first met she had just come from a full day of picketing during the actors and writers strikes last year and “was really tired and low energy.”

“The producer, he wanted us to do a full run-through of the show and I was just like, ‘that’s not gonna be happening tonight.’ I was like, ‘on Monday morning when the cameras start rolling, I will bring the magic baby,’” she recalled. “But not tonight, not tonight. I feel like that night Chef Mike was like ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to work with this Diva.’”

Haracz laughed and said that he denied that was the case.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” he said. “So I assumed this is just how it works.”

Once they got past that initial hurdle they got to cooking D & D style, and things have been going deliciously ever since.

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