Restaurant Empire (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.7 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Bob Colayco
• Reviewed on: 04/11/2003
• Released on: 03/26/2003
• Originally published on GameSpot: Restaurant Empire (PC) Review

The popular Food Network show Iron Chef has been a cult hit in the United States for years, offering viewers entertaining cooking battles between some of the world's top chefs. So it's no surprise that the developers at Enlight have incorporated some aspects from that show into their restaurant management game, Restaurant Empire. But the game is much more than a cheap attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the show. The game's lead designer, Trevor Chan, is responsible for acclaimed strategy games like Capitalism II, and his expertise is apparent in Restaurant Empire, a game that, despite a slightly flawed interface and presentation, provides an enjoyable and deep strategy experience.

Restaurant Empire comes with two gameplay modes: a sandbox mode and an 18-scenario campaign that follows the adventures of a young chef, Armand LeBoeuf, who has just graduated from cooking school. Armand begins the game managing a restaurant formerly run by his uncle Michel, also an expert chef, and he sets out to expand his operation to include several restaurants in three cities (Paris, Rome, and Los Angeles). The story involves Armand's fledgling operation going up against the might of an international food conglomerate called Omnifood.

The gameplay may seem complicated at first, since it offers an almost dizzying array of options for building, decorating, and running your restaurants. Fortunately, you're coached by the game's extensive tutorial, which, over the course of the campaign's first few scenarios, walks you through almost every available option in the game, offering tips on how to gain new customers and how to best satisfy your current clientele.

Almost every imaginable aspect of running a restaurant is simulated in Restaurant Empire. You'll need to hire general staff for each restaurant, like servers, captains, kitchen porters, and, of course, chefs. Each chef in the game has different levels of skill in different areas, such as appetizers, main courses, and soups. This expertise is further subdivided into three categories of food--French, Italian, and American. The restaurants need to be set up with dining sets, lighting, and appropriate decor, and it's also possible to add and move kitchen appliances around to achieve maximum efficiency.

Much of the game's strategy revolves around food. Each dish in your menu consists of several ingredients, each with a specific cost and price. It's possible to adjust the quality of each ingredient to drive the cost of a dish up or down (which also causes the dish's quality to go up or down). As your chefs practice making certain dishes, they'll gain more skill points in that particular category of cuisine and the specific dish, which also affects the overall quality of the food. It's even possible to assign a specific chef in the kitchen to be the only one to prepare certain dishes, in order to make him or her improve at certain recipes more quickly. Over time, as you learn which dishes your customers prefer, it's easy to add or remove them from your menu or adjust their prices to maximize profit margins.

Certain special customers in the restaurant will have access to specific high-quality ingredients, which you can purchase and add to your recipes to make them better. Other customers will offer to sell you new recipes, information on how to better prepare dishes (which increases preparation skill), or information on secret ingredients that you can add to your dishes to make them better. And every so often, it's possible to enter local cooking contests, which will net you bonus money, new recipes, and prestige for your chef and his or her dishes if you can win them. The prestige of winning these Iron Chef-style cooking contests also increases the popularity of your restaurants.

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