Getting Started in Restaurant City

The Restaurant City Video Game by Playfish is one of the more popular apps on Facebook. You may have gotten a banana as a gift from one of your friends, seen a post about how they found the Food King, or just clicked a link while playing Country Story or Pet Society. Now you'd like to know how to play this Restaurant City game.

The Basics

The good news is, the Restaurant City game mechanics are very simple and suitable for the casual gamer. You don't have to dash around clicking tables and making everything happen like in some other restaurant-based games. Your main responsibility is to keep your staff rested, and they will take care of everything else. You will start off with one chef, yourself, and be prompted through the game's tutorial to hire a waiter. You will be able to hire more chefs and waiters as you level up in Restaurant City, and you will eventually want to hire a janitor to take care of the one task you are responsible for yourself at this point: picking up garbage. You can let your employees rest by putting them in bed. The advantage of this is that it is free. The disadvantage is that you will need to close your restaurant by blocking or removing your door while they are sleeping or your popularity will go down. If you can afford it, you can also replenish your employee's energy by feeding them. The advantage of this is that your restaurant will be open much more. The disadvantage is that this can get expensive, especially if you have a low popularity rating.

Unlocking and Leveling Up Dishes

Since your employees in Restaurant City will take care of cooking and serving the food as long as you keep their energy high, you are free to think about your menu. Most of the dishes you serve in Restaurant City require three ingredients, although there are some exceptions. In order to unlock a dish and serve it, you will need to collect all of the ingredients in the dish. For instance, if you'd like to serve lobster, you'll need lobster, butter, and salad. After you unlock the dish, you can serve it by making sure there is a yellow outline spinning around the dish. Once a dish has been unlocked in Restaurant City, it can be leveled up by collecting the ingredients again. As a dish levels up, it is worth more gourmet points (which are used to level up your game) when your customers order it, but it does not get you more coins.

What Should You Spend Coins On?

Coins in the Restaurant City video game are rare enough that you will not be able to do everything you want. You will need to make some decisions about what is most important to you. Do you want to focus on trophies? Leveling up quickly? Decorating? If you are busy feeding your employees and buying seeds and ingredients to unlock recipes, you will not have much left over for buying all those seasonal tables and chairs unless you decide to bite the bullet and buy coins or Playfish cash. Of course, once you start doing that, you will be able to decorate to your heart's content; maybe you'll even find yourself on Gourmet Street one day!