I’ve mentioned in at least one video over on our YouTube channel that I was born with a neurological condition known as cerebral palsy. It’s a disability which, among several other things negatively affects my hand-eye coordination. In light of this, I’ve been advised by various doctors over the years to engage in activities that can reinforce that skill over time.

When I was younger, my optometrist at the time specifically mentioned that video games could help in this endeavor. As I’m sure you can imagine, my doctor’s suggestion resonated with me because I was already immersed in the world of gaming. The most prominent titles I’ve played for this reason are the majority of the Guitar Hero franchise and, in a similar vein, Ubisoft’s pair of guitar-teaching Rocksmith titles. These games did indeed help noticeably enough when I played them consistently. However, despite how much I enjoy playing them, I’m bound to grow bored eventually.

One franchise that helps with my hand-eye coordination and has yet to bore me is known as Cook, Serve, Delicious!, developed and published by Vertigo Gaming. You might recall that I’ve already reviewed the first and second games in this franchise in what feels like the distant past. I also own the most recent third title in the series.

Rest assured that I intend to cover Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! in some form as soon as I can. However, I wanted to return to the original game and review it once again a bit more thoroughly. Let us dive in and see what this title has to offer, shall we?

Cook, Serve, Delicious! is a restaurant management simulator wherein you’re tasked with building up the reputation of your restaurant. The ultimate goal is earning both your eatery and yourself a five-star designation. To accomplish this you must acquire, prepare, and efficiently serve quite a variety of different foods and beverages to thousands of customers across your career.

You begin the game operating a zero-star restaurant which has recently reopened. Your restaurant’s home is in a building known as Sherrisoda Tower in an undisclosed (and presumably fictional) geographical location. As previously mentioned, your goal is to go from zero stars to five. Obviously, you’ll have to do this by earning one star at a time. You must complete a series of increasingly difficult and time-consuming challenges in order to earn each star.

For example, to earn your first star you’ll be required to do such things as complete twenty in-game days of operation, earn $100 in tips, pass a health and safety inspection, and complete three separate days during which you perfectly prepare and serve at least twelve orders in a row. It should be noted that you can only get the tip requirement after purchasing the locked Tip Jar upgrade.

Of course, in order to accomplish any of those goals, you’ll need an active menu. As such, another one of your first tasks on the road to your first star is to purchase a few different foods. Whichever foods you choose to purchase will constitute your initial active menu for a given day. Keep in mind, however, that most of the purchasable foods which generate more income than usual are typically quite expensive to initially unlock.

As an example, unlocking the ability to add steak to your menu has an upfront cost of $2,200. Each steak sold thereafter will net you a profit of $10 by default. That might sound like a fair bit of sticker shock, and in all honesty, I’ve found that it definitely can be. That’s why you’ll probably want to sell as many expensive foods and beverages as you can as quickly as possible to recoup your investments.

As I alluded to a moment ago, the act of serving items from your active menu to customers will generate income based on each item’s menu price. That’s where the figure that each steak you sell will earn you ten dollars came from. You can then use this income to purchase different menu items or upgrade those you’ve already purchased over time.

Furthermore, you can purchase new stations within your kitchen that allow you to unlock and prepare new types of foods. For instance, you need a stove station in order to do things like boil pasta, or a deep fryer to make fried chicken and French fries. I highly recommend purchasing as many different menu items as possible over your first few days in business.

If you generate enough income to do this, you’ll be able to change up your menu as often as you see fit. The game makes it abundantly clear that you’re meant to alter your menu quite regularly. Preferably, you’ll want to make at least one or two alterations every two to three days. This is due to a gameplay mechanic referred to by the game as “menu rot.”

Most foods you can unlock, at least at the start of a campaign, cause menu rot eventually. To define the term, menu rot occurs if and when certain items remain on your active menu for more than two consecutive in-game days. Menu rot should be avoided wherever possible because it causes potential customers to lose interest in your menu. Your customers desire new, “fresher” items to choose from, and it’s part of your duty to provide new options for them as often as you can.

Thankfully, since the game makes it so clear that menu rot is to be avoided, Cook, Serve, Delicious! also provides mechanics that make it easy for you to keep track of it before it negatively affects your restaurant. Not only will you be able to clearly see exactly which foods are currently causing menu rot upon checking your active menu before beginning each day; you’ll also be notified via your in-game email inbox (shown to you automatically) each time it occurs.

Thus, you’ll be able to swiftly remove the offending items from your active menu, even if only for a day or two. Obviously, though, you’ll ideally want to be certain you have enough alternative options to replace any foods that are causing menu rot and ensure that you maintain a fully-stocked active menu. If you haven’t unlocked the necessary amount of other items to fill every slot on your menu, you can still start the day with whatever you have available. For the sake of maximizing your income and positive buzz generation, however, I would counsel against doing so unless you have no other choice.

Additionally, you can simultaneously combat menu rot and avoid having to alter your menu quite as frequently by purchasing certain menu items that the game designates as “staple” dishes. These items, such as beer, salads, soda, and ice cream, don’t cause menu rot. Therefore, they can remain on your active menu for as long as you desire. Even so, I wouldn’t really advise maintaining a menu full of staple foods unless you really want to practice preparing those items until you’ve mastered them. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

The idea of having things like beer and ice cream on your active menu leads me to something else you’ll have to contend with if you want to take your restaurant to the top of the food chain. There are certain things you can do, and other things you have little to no control over, which either add or subtract from your restaurant’s total positive “buzz.” The higher your percentage of positive buzz, the faster favorable word of mouth spreads about your restaurant. This leads to more new customers.

Two examples of things you can actively do to increase your positive buzz are passing a health and safety inspection and having a “perfect day,” where you serve all orders perfectly and perform every chore that happens to pop up. Granted, you can’t control when safety inspections happen, however they usually occur every five in-game days or so. They also tend to make things a bit more stressful than usual in my experience due to the reduced time you’re allotted to attend to chores while the inspector is in your restaurant.

Certain foods can also either positively or negatively affect your total buzz. For example, having beer on your active menu will reduce your total positive buzz by about five percent. People apparently frown upon establishments such as yours serving alcohol. That’s not entirely your fault, of course, but that’s the price you’ll have to pay for having such an easy-to-prepare item on your active menu. The same effect is noticeable when you have too many foods on your menu at a time which the game designates as “fatty” or otherwise unhealthy.

Of course, the main aspect of Cook, Serve, Delicious! and the part of it that has helped strengthen my hand-eye coordination is the process of actually preparing and serving items from your menu. Each item on your menu requires different preparation methods which requires different combinations of button presses. Because of this, I would suggest starting out with foods that are easier and/or faster to prepare while you’re learning the game’s intricacies and developing the necessary muscle memory.

To name a couple of specific examples of what I mean here, items such as beer and ice cream require a minimal amount of button presses. To zero in on beer for a moment, all you need to do is simply hold the down arrow key for a few seconds to pour an appropriate amount of beer. Just use the visual guides that Cook, Serve, Delicious! provides you in order to avoid overfilling or underfilling the glass, and you’ll be fine until you get the exact timing down.

I would also advise practicing with foods like lasagna if you’re feeling bold, though I offer that advice rather hesitantly for new players. In its default state, lasagna requires you to press four buttons in a specific order, then repeat that combination twice more before placing the dish in the oven. So, you’ll find yourself pressing P, S, C, and R in that order three times, followed by the Enter key to actually start cooking the lasagna.

I recommend that newer players start out with items which are simple and quick to prepare for one main reason. Twice a day, around noon and 6PM, your restaurant will experience the classic concept of a rush hour. Sadly, these are not sixty-minute time windows during which you can treat yourself and your patrons to the legendary musical virtuosity of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. I’ve always found this more than a bit disappointing, but I suppose copyright law gets in the way of making this particular dream of mine a reality.

During these events, several customers will essentially flood your restaurant and place orders all at once. You’ll have to prepare and serve their orders as quickly and efficiently as possible if you don’t want them taking their business elsewhere. There’s also the ever-present possibility that you’ll have to take care of chores during a rush hour. This is always a major inconvenience, but I’ll come back to that concept in a bit.

You might also try keeping at least a couple of items on your menu specifically meant to be served most frequently during rush hours. For this purpose, I would suggest things that have a decently-high menu price but don’t require much preparation or actual cooking. Take salads, for example.

In their default (that is, non-upgraded) state, salads could potentially require several button presses at worst, such as when someone orders a salad with every available topping on it. However, to make up for that, you can press the buttons in any order and you don’t have to worry about any additional steps beyond the initial assembly process. That is what makes a menu item ideal for the twice-daily periods of insanity.

If you think rush hours are overwhelming, wait until you experience some of the periodic catering events that you’ll be asked to attend. As far as I’ve experienced thus far, these events are (for lack of a better term) like rush hours on steroids. I haven’t quite been able to tell whether or not any upgrades you’ve purchased to extend your customers’ patience are in effect during these events, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it.

However, at least you’ll get paid rather handsomely for accepting catering jobs, provided you don’t screw them up too badly. For example, the first catering event I was told about required me to have purchased Pizza and Burgers before I could accept the job. Once there, I was paid $25 per item served so long as I served at least fifteen people and had no more than three bad orders during the time limit of the job. I somehow managed to serve nineteen people at that event, so I made off with a little under a cool five hundred dollars when all was said and done.

All this talk of rush hours brings me to another hectic aspect of gameplay within Cook, Serve, Delicious!. Customers aren’t going to wait all day for you to prepare their order. They’ve got other things to do with their time after all. If you don’t serve their requested items within a certain amount of time, they’ll storm out in a fit of impatient rage. As you might expect, that’ll cause any positive buzz you’ve managed to generate to decrease the following day. It will also mess up any combos of perfect orders you may have racked up during the current shift.

Thankfully, there are restaurant upgrades you can purchase which will extend the patience of your customers. For example, you can unlock table snacks for a small fee, or even upgrade your restaurant’s air conditioning in order to convince your patrons to give you more time to prepare their orders.

In addition to accurately preparing and serving each customer’s order in a timely manner, you’ll occasionally be required to perform chores such as washing dishes, setting rat traps, cleaning the toilets, or taking out trash in order to keep things running smoothly. While you’re focused on a chore, you cannot work toward preparing a customer’s order.

You can, however, still press the corresponding order button when appropriate to serve certain types of fully-prepared orders that required time to cook (such as a pizza that just finished baking). It’s quite a good thing you’re able to do this, as many types of foods that require time to cook will burn if they aren’t served quickly enough once they’re done. You can see when an item is about to burn by looking at the meter on the right side of the prep station. If that meter is in the red, the item has officially burned.

These chores can be a significant annoyance if you’re serving particularly impatient customers or trying not to be overwhelmed by a rush hour. However, they aren’t nearly as much of a nuisance during slow hours in my experience. There is one exception though. Every now and then (rarely in my experience), you will be robbed at gunpoint during your shift. If that comes as a surprise to you, I want to emphasize that I wasn’t expecting something so dangerous to happen in an otherwise family-friendly game like this, either.

The robber will make off with a potentially significant portion of your money, which you can’t get back unless you provide an accurate description of the fiend’s appearance to local law enforcement authorities and hope the cops can catch them. This tends to be irritating no matter when it happens, but is especially so when robbers have the bright idea to strike during a rush hour. It’s as if they think I don’t have enough to juggle without them barging in and raiding my cash register!

I noted earlier that you’ll be notified by email of occurrences such as menu rot. Beyond that, however, I’ve found that it’s quite important (and potentially lucrative) to pay attention to certain emails you may receive. For example, you’ll be notified via email of upcoming safety inspections and things of that nature.

However, you’ll also occasionally have the chance to earn some extra cash if you keep an eye out for such opportunities. Beyond that, sometimes people will genuinely just email you cash! This could originate from things like investment dividends, overpaid taxes from previous restaurant ventures, or as a gift from your mentor, Chef Risotto, after a perfect day.

Then there are the areas where things get a little risky and (by extension) a little more interesting. Someone who refers to himself as “Crazy Dave” (no relation to yours truly) will sometimes email you bets wherein he will challenge your skills as a chef and restaurant manager. If you accept one of his wagers and complete a challenge which he details in an initial email, you’ll usually earn a considerable amount of money.

For example, early on in the campaign, if Crazy Dave posits the idea that you can’t make it through a day without making any bad orders, you can choose to put up $300 toward that bet. Should you prove Dave wrong, you’ll walk away with double that amount and temporarily make him regret doubting your skills. However, if you lose, he keeps your portion of the wager.

To conclude, I quite enjoy Cook, Serve, Delicious!, and that’s not just because it helps me cope with one of the physical aspects of my disability. I am often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of orders I have to complete, especially during rush hours. However, I feel a strong sense of accomplishment whenever I manage to make it through a shift at the restaurant with no mistakes.

I must say, though, that playing any game in the Cook, Serve, Delicious! Franchise frequently reminds me of the song “Minimum Rage” by Psychostick, whose lyrics tell the tale of an exceptionally-frustrated employee working a dead-end job at a fast food joint. To help illustrate why these games remind me of that song, consider the following spoken-word lyrics from it: “Oh! How considerate of you to come in and order five minutes before we close! We already shut everything down and cleaned it all up, but we’ll go ahead and fire those grills right back up just for you, champ!”

Honestly, when I was first starting out with the game, I used to internally question customers who visited my restaurant and ordered a beer at nine o’clock in the morning. I mean, no wonder having beer on the menu negatively affects my total positive buzz if I’m attracting customers who want a drink that early! They can at least wait until after they get off work! As I added more complex foods to my menu, however, I began to cherish customers who wanted “easier” orders, like beer or fried chicken.

On that same token, I began to despise customers who ordered nachos or pizzas with every possible topping in existence, especially those who placed such orders during rush hours. Suffice it to say, there’s a very good reason I don’t work in the food service industry. I’m much more comfortable living vicariously through greatly enjoyable games like this one.

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Cook, Serve, Delicious!

$9.99 USD

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Challenging gameplay assists with engagement
• Lots of Flexibility
• Great for Hand-Eye Coordination

Cons

• Hectic gameplay mechanics may discourage newcomers over time