My chef avatar’s arm, that is. Not my real arm. And his other arm has a pasta tattoo.
When you’re a chef, attractively plating a meal is almost as important as how the meal itself tastes. Is that true? I have no idea: I am not a chef and I should definitely not be allowed to plate meals. The first time I tried it in Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator (opens in new tab) it was a disaster. The cooking and restaurant management sim lets you not only prepare meals but place every last thing on the plate manually before you serve them: meat, vegetables, sides, garnish, even the sauces.
You be the judge. In the gif below, can you tell which order of steak with shallots and homemade french fries I plated manually, and which is the default plating the game suggests?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna earn that Michelin star shown in the trailer above.
But untalented as I may be, I’m dedicated to this Chef Life game, which launches on Steam (opens in new tab) and the Epic Store (opens in new tab) today. My chef even has mushrooms tattooed on one arm and pasta on the other, that’s how into this kitchen lifestyle I am. And I’m having fun, which is really all that matters. To me. To my customers, what matters is that I don’t ignore their special instructions, that I don’t botch their meals, and that I don’t leave them waiting too long as I dash around the kitchen desperately recooking the meals I’ve botched. I often do all of these things on the same night.
I begin each day at my restaurant by deciding what’s on the menu, which early on is just a few dishes: caprese salad with basil, sole meunière with green beans, the steak and fries you saw earlier. Serving customers properly gives me XP to unlock new recipes like consommé (veggie soup), cacio e pepe (pasta), and meatballs (balls of meat). I order the ingredients from one of several grocery stores, and when they arrive I stock my kitchen for the night’s menu.
Then I immediately begin panicking because the clock is quickly counting down until opening time and I need to get ahead of the evening rush by prepping the meals. I can chop veggies in advance, shred cheese, cube beef, slice fish, and store it all in the fridge. I can even cook a few items like sauces and green beans which I can keep heated at a warming station. Most of this business is done with a quick little minigame where I press the arrow keys, or maybe a mouse movement to stir a saucepan with a spoon so the hot goop of whatever I’m cooking doesn’t stick to the sides.
