Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator Preview

Preview code used with many thanks to Dead Good Media.

Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator is the new simulator game from Cyanide Studio and NACON. The game is due to release next year on February 2nd. I’ve had the chance to play the first ten days of the game on the road to becoming a chef.

Time to Cook

In Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator, you take on the task of running a restaurant. You’re on a quest to earn the coveted awards from the Michelin guide. The prestigious Michelin guide is a real-life guide used in restaurants, and the Guide awards up to three Michelin stars for excellence to a select few establishments. The acquisition or loss of a star or stars can dramatically affect a restaurant’s success. You can read more about the Michelin Guide here.

As a chef in Chef Life A Restaurant simulator, you’ll employ staff and buy stock and equipment. You’ll also deal with customers and design the decor of your restaurant, last but not least you’ll do some cooking.

Customise Your Character

When the game starts, you get to customise your character, pick their sex out of male or female and a few other options such as hair and eye colour. I was surprised that there is only male or female to choose from, as most games nowadays have more options for gender.

Then your first day as a chef begins as you greet your assistant Kassim in the restaurant. But first, Kassim puts you to practice to see how good your cooking skills are with a few more straightforward recipes.

Tutorial

This is where the game walks you through the preparation and cooking of food. As your restaurant will serve Michelin-star quality food, you won’t be cooking burgers and fries or making a bacon buttie that you would find in a local neighbourhood cafe.

Instead, the food in Chef Life is all high-end cuisine, primarily French, Italian and international cuisine. Dishes such as Bœuf bourguignon, Caccio e pepe, and Blanquette de veau to name a few.

The preparation of food is handled well in the game and is pretty realistic. First, you collect the ingredients you need for the recipe, then off to the chopping block to slice the meat. Using the R stick, which you move down, the meat is sliced smoothly. I particularly like the movements for chopping veg or slicing meat; the actions feel lifelike even when using a controller.

Cooking the dish involves all the correct steps and knowing when to add ingredients to the pot. In addtion, you must season your dish with salt and pepper, using your chef’s sniff sense to know when the dish is seasoned correctly.

Food Presentation

Once cooked, you will spend some time ensuring the food is presented well on the plate to serve the customer. If you are successful in all aspects of making the dish, you earn a rating. The preparation and cooking actions are fun, but there isn’t a fail-safe. If you fail to make the dish, you must do it again and again until you complete it correctly.

That’s fine, as I understand the developers are trying to make the game as lifelike as possible, and you don’t get a second chance in a restaurant if the dish fails. However, it turns into a real drag in the game. Having to redo a dish you have failed sucks the fun out of the game. The food and ingredients in the game looked realistic, but I was dubious about the appearance of the steak I cooked.

February 2nd Release Date

When the full game is released in February, you will be a lot more hands-on in the restaurant and decide on the food to put on the menu. You’ll be ordering the ingredients for the recipes and employing staff. In addtion, you’ll adapt your menu to the seasons and your customers’ expectations to make a name for yourself. After all, it’s about earning the coveted Michelin stars to make your restaurant the best.

The game performed reasonably well on my laptop, though it did have the odd framerate judder when my character walked around the restaurant. The control system is a keyboard and mouse, or you can use a controller. I tried out both, and my preference was to use a controller.

Looks Promising

Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator is looking promising for its February 2023 release date. Anyone into restaurant/cooking simulators will find everything they want in the game. As for me, while I did enjoy playing the preview, I’ll stick to cooking every day in real life for the family and not earning Michelin stars; at least that way, I get to eat what I have prepared.

Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator will be released on February 2nd 2023, for Nintendo Switch and Steam, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.