How to Play Playfish's Restaurant City

You begin with one waiter and one cook, and enough ingredients to "unlock" (begin serving) three dishes and a drink. Your employees all have a box at the bottom of the screen showing how much time they have left until they either need to rest or eat. As you get more ingredients you can unlock more dishes. The dishes also level up to a level 10 or "royal" dish. You will need one of each of the ingredients in the recipe to make the dish or level it up; you do not need new ingredients every time the dish is sold.

You have to serve the customers in a certain amount of time or they will leave and your popularity level will go down. Buy video game machines to keep waiting customers occupied, Customers will also leave and vote you down if there is nowhere for them to sit. Put some extra chairs around the room for waiting customers. Customers will get angry after they eat if there are no toilets, and although they will not vote you down, they will not vote you up either. Eventually you will have 9 employees which is enough to serve all your customers in a timely manner. You will want to make one of the employees a cleaner to fix the toilets when they overflow and to fix broken video game consoles when you are not there. When you are logged in, you can fix the toilets and games by clicking on them.

Efficiency

The eventual goal is to have 4 cooks, 4 waiters and a cleaner.You gain employees as you level up in Restaurant City. Most people arrange their tables in two island layouts; that is to say, each island's tables are in a rectangle with two waiters trapped inside each island and the stoves are part of the island with the cooks outside the island. Drink machines also join the stoves and table to make part of the island; obviously the front of the drink machines faces the waiters.

You want to arrange things so the waiters do not have to walk very far, saving them time. Stoves and drink machines all work at the same rate, so expensive appliances are just for looks. Be sure to take the door off the restaurant when you put your employees to bed; other wise customers will keep coming in, sitting down, getting angry, voting you down and leaving.

How to get ingredients

You get an ingredient when you visit a friend's restaurant for the first time. You also get one from Restaurant City automatically each day that you log in and a chance to win another by answering a one question food quiz daily. You can buy seeds to grow ingredients in your garden and you can buy ingredients directly, although only three ingredients per day are available to buy. You can buy as many of those three ingredients as you want, and the three ingredients change daily. You can also ask friends to trade ingredients. You can leave ingredients unlocked and hope for the best, or lock them and require your friends to ask you before trading. Many people make their restaurant name the name of ingredients they are looking for.

Serious game players add other players temporarily to get the first visit ingredient. There are many groups on the social network to facilitate the adding of temporary friends. You can also go to a group called Restaurant City Marketplace to look for friends who have the ingredients you need. It is considered good Restaurant City etiquette to message each temporary friend in the game when you have gotten your ingredient. If they do not message you that they have gotten theirs, it is polite to wait at least 24 hours before removing them from your friends list.

How to get coins

You make money in Restaurant City every time you sell a dish or drink. You also make money every time a customer plays your video games or your cleaner picks up trash. You can visit your friends' restaurants for more coins every day; when you arrive you will be asked to perform a task such as putting out a fire or ridding the place of skunks. Click on the object of the task (fire, skunks, penguins, etc) and a white circle will appear and turn to red when the task is done. You will then receive some coins. While inside your friends' restaurants you can click and drag the screen in different directions to see and click on the trees in their back and side yards. Click on all the trees because some of them have coins in them. Don't forget to pick up any trash while you are visiting because you get paid for cleaning up too. As with all Playfish games, you can also buy coins.

Extras

You get to fix up your interior and exterior any way you like by purchasing tables, chairs, wallpaper, tile and various other decorations. Restaurant City allows you to save three layouts so that you can switch among them without physically rearranging everything every time. You can also get a music player and choose between several different songs that will play. Some decorations and appliances cost real money, but most can be bought with game coins.

Final tips

Establish good relationships with other players by only trading quality ingredients. Some Restaurant City ingredients are rarer than others, so don't go around offering people a very common sausage, for example, in exchange for a less common potato. If you treat others well, you can help each other succeed in the game. Most of all, have fun!