Restaurant City: Dishing Up Virtual Fun

Have you ever found yourself waiting for your meal at a restaurant and in looking around you think to yourself, "If I owned this place I would....." Maybe you would change the menu or spruce up the décor. Maybe the uniforms of the staff are a bit drab or maybe they just need a Crazy Planets pinball machine in the corner. In Restaurant City, an addictive video game by Playfish, you can design your own restaurant, decorate it however you wish, and call it anything under the sun. Use this informative guide to Restaurant City to find your way around.

Playfish has designed several free games that can be played on social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, iPhone and Android. Currently Restaurant City is one of 11 games offered. Check out

Getting started

How hard can it be? You start off with this little shack of a place that really needs some fixing up. So here you go! What would you do? Lets start off with the outside of the building. Click on the brick wall icon below your restaurant to decorate and choose a name for your budding restaurant. So what would you name it? Click the blue arrow that says "Edit" to enter a name. It could be your namesake or something completely random like "Enter the Dragon" which is currently one of the top restaurants. You are only limited by your imagination. After you choose a name you can design the outside of your building. Use the other icons to choose a door, siding, and windows. Do you want a typical roof or something funky like a sub sandwich or an ice cream sundae. As you earn more money (look at the top right to see how much you have) you can make your restaurant bigger by choosing the first icon which looks like a building with its roof missing. There are also several decorative items to choose from that will help to make your restaurant stand out from the rest. Make sure to click the green checkmark to save your work.

Now click your restaurant to go inside and take a look around. It's nothing exciting yet but wait until you finesse it up a bit. It will be the hotspot of the town in no time. Take a look at your row of icons below. You will see:

3 people which takes you outside to the street

A hammer which lets you change your décor

An orange "menu" icon will let you change your menu and see your ingredients

An icon with Fruit and money take you to the ingredient market

An envelope allows you to check your mailbox

A blue folder with a + will open up when you mouse over it to show three more icons listed below

A person in white icon for customizing your own character

The music symbol allows you to change the music in your restaurant if you have a music player

The awards icon allows you to see the awards you have earned and your progress towards the others

The camera icon allows you to take a picture of your restaurant

Grow your restaurant faster by inviting new people

Don't forget to invite your friends. You can even put them to work in your restaurant. You'll notice the row of rectangles at the bottom of the screen. Click "Invite your Friends" and then give them a job to do. Wouldn't it be fun to make your preppy sister the janitor? Your best friends can be waiters or cooks. Click on an employee to open a box that allows you to do a number off things.

Decide whether they will be a cook, waiter, janitor or to have them rest.

Click on the Uniform icon to change what you want them to wear while working in your restaurant, which could be shirt and tie or Hawaiian shirts and shorts! Add some bunny ears and a heart tattoo if you want. It's all in fun.

You can even give an employee the "sack" if necessary

Give your employee some nourishment. Choose a glass of water, apple, banana, or sandwich. Each restores a different percentage of energy and the cost goes up accordingly.

Click "send a gift" to send food items to your friends.

Just make sure to keep your workers happy. There isn't a formal union yet but they do require rest on occasion or they may just fall asleep on the job. You're employees will work for about 3 hours but the happier they are the faster they will go. You do want to get good ratings after all. A thumbs down too many and you wont get as much traffic directed to your restaurant. If you look to the top right of the screen you will see a white "thumbs up" icon and your rating. To keep that number up you will need to :

Keep your employees moving fast

Make sure you have enough tables and chairs for your customers

Have enough stoves and cooks

Make sure you have enough waiters working

Have a janitor to keep things clean or working properly

Tip: Block your restaurant door with something like a chair before putting your employees to sleep. That will keep people from coming in and leaving unhappy. If you have an outside area block the row nearest the street to prevent people coming in that way.

Have fun decorating your restaurant with your earnings. Add some fancy floor tiles and wall paper. Maybe your stoves need updating. There are several to choose from. Upgrade your tables and chairs to add pizzazz to your restaurant. Playfish is constantly adding new options and limited addition themes like Egyptian, western flare, and pirates Yar Har! Nefertiti's Bar is one restaurant offering Egyptian fare.

Some items are functional and some help make money. Pick up an arcade machine or two or some slot machines. They will break down occasionally but your janitor can fix them. You can also click them to do the work yourself. There are some great soda machines as well which will add the drink menu full of great offerings like espresso and saffron tea. You can also add a outside dining area where you're guests can dine under the sun. Plant some nice trees and flowers to make a romantic place to dine. Back inside you can add some plants there too. Purchase a stereo to enliven the mood of your diners. Don't forget to add a restroom or your guests will leave in a hurry with a big thumbs down.

Select your menu

You start off with a simple starter menu but as you gather ingredients you can build a mouth watering menu of Camembert baked in a box, lobster and Crème Brule. There are many dishes to add to your menu and often there are special addition dishes that you can only get during a limited time frame. Each dish has three ingredients that you have to get in order to level up and the higher the level the more Gourmet points you earn and the faster you can expand and add more employees. Look at the top center of your screen to see how many gourmet points you have.

Click on your menu now and take a look at what you can do.

Select a dish to add to your menu by click it. You will see a yellow dashed circle around it. Click again to de-select. You can select up to 3 dishes for each category

A small blue circle tells you what level your dish is

Look below each dish to see what ingredients you need to level them up. Full color ingredients show what you have and dimmed ingredients are what you need to get

Click the yellow arrows on either side of the screen to scan all of the dishes.

Above, you can click the different sections of the menu: Starter, Main, Desert, and Drink

Below you'll find your ingredients

Click the bullhorn icon to ask your friends to send ingredients you need

Click the small restaurant icon to the left to return to your restaurant

Tip: Only select one dish in each category (starter, main, desert, drink) to concentrate on. If you find you have enough ingredients to level up a new dish go ahead but don't select it. When people come in their dish is randomly selected from what you are offering. You want only the highest level selected to get the most gourmet points per customer.

Getting the ingredients you need

Every day when you log in for the first time you will get a new ingredient to add to your pantry. You will also find a daily quiz in your mailbox which can earn you another free ingredient if you know a little food trivia. If you don't, you will before long. Other ways to get the ingredients you are looking for is to trade with a friend or purchase from the ingredient market. Eventually, as you level up, you will be able to grow some of your own ingredients in your garden plot.

Take a stroll

If you go out to the street and walk around a bit you can visit your friends restaurants and see how they are doing. What are they serving? Look on the wall for their menu. Maybe you have an ingredient they need and can offer a trade for something you could use. While you are there see if there is anything you can help with. If there is trash on the floor, click it to clean it up and earn a little extra money. You can also water their garden plots if they have anything planted. And, shake a tree or two. They tend to have money in them. Oh, see any sleeping bears or huge water leaks running off the customers? Lets take care of that too. Anything for a friend right?

You can also go to Random Street and visit various restaurants around Restaurant City. Maybe they have some ideas you can use. If you especially like a restaurant you can rate them with up to five stars. I'm sure you would like a good rating yourself! Oh, and don't miss the highlight of the city! Meander down Gourmet Street to see the most popular Restaurants and find out what made them so hot. If you happen to run into the Food King while you are out click on him and he will give you something special.

So, what's taking you so long? Go and get started!www.playfish.com to see their other exciting video games.