Cooking is one of the oldest human activities there is. The deliberate heating of food in order to increase its safety and nutritional value is hundreds of thousands of years old, possibly predating anatomically modern humans. It is an ancient element of our nature, analogous to war and language, so it’s only natural that, just likewarand language, there should be a lot of games themed after it.
Admittedly, there don’t seem to be any cooking games as the oldest war and word games, but there are plenty of games available today that center the process of preparing food. Here are some of the best cooking-related games you can serve up to your friends or family.
Rival Restaurants
Run your own restaurant!
Rival Restaurants is a restaurant simulation game that casts players as chefs and charges them with doing everything they can to make their own unique restaurant as popular as possible.
Rival Restaurants is a fun and quirky business simulation game where you take the role of one of several chefs, each of whom have different abilities, and work toward the success of one of your chosen restaurants, which also has unique abilities. This game isn’t just about cooking. There are business management mechanics here as well, but, unlike some restaurant simulations, cooking is still a major element of this game.
Chefs must work to acquire ingredients and assemble them into recipes to obtain popularity points for their restaurants, and as they do, they’ll unlock unique special abilities that will help them accrue yet more popularity.
Hasty Baker
A family card game
Hasty Baker is a simple, kid-friendly card game that has players use the recipe and ingredient cards in their hands to score points. A great choice for families with small children.
Hasty Baker is an incredibly simplefamilycard gamethat casts players as chefs trying to win a cookoff. They do this by drawing recipe and ingredient cards and using the ingredient cards to make the recipes.
This game is incredibly simple, with rules a child can understand, yet there’s enough variety in the tactics and cards available to you that there is some strategy in it, even if adult gamers will find its strategic depth a bit lacking. It’s a great game to enjoy along with children who can’t handle something too complex, and who will appreciate the game’s colorful visuals.
The Great British Baking Show Game
Get the experience of being on a beloved game show
Adapted from the show of the same name, this simple card game has players fighting to balance speed and quality as they attempt to assemble assigned dishes out of the cards they draw, constantly weighing whether to accept a good enough card now or hold out for a stronger one later.
Based on the British game show which, depending on your region, you may instead know as the Great British Bake-off, this fast and simple game has players using cards from their private deck to craft assigned dishes for themselves. The ingredients they draw will vary in quality, and players will be able to choose between lower and higher quality ingredients when constructing their recipes. They will be rewarded for making higher-quality meals, but they’ll also be rewarded for finishing earlier, so they must make strategic decisions about what quality of ingredients to accept and how to manage their cards as they construct their dishes.
There’s a subtle genius to the trade-offs this game forces players to make. You’re constantly weighing the pros and cons of every card you place, or don’t place. If you want something that will force you and your friends to make agonizing strategic decisions quickly, this is absolutely the game for you.
MasterChef Family Cooking Game
Turn a task into a game
This fun family game uses a variety of cards and simple scoring methods to turn the actual act of cooking into a board game experience designed to teach children kitchen skills.
The other games on this list are simply themed around the idea of cooking, but this one makes the act of cooking into a game. Using a variety of cards to gamify every step in the cooking process, including special challenges that force you to do things like identify ingredients by touch alone, this game allows you and yourchildren,to have fun throughout the process of making an actual recipe, which will leave you with something you can eat in the end!
This game is designed for children, and explicitly incorporates adult judges into the rules. Adults will find many of the tasks this game teaches trivial, but that’s because the game isn’t for them. It’s for parents who need a way to get their children to learn skills they’ll need later in life.
Top Waffle
It’s easy to vary the complexity of this game
This simple but surprisingly strategic card game has players working to fulfill the orders of customers by using the cards they acquire to place the correct toppings on their waffles.
Another game about using cards to satisfy the orders of customers, this time with the cards representing topping you place on their waffles. This game has more strategic depth than some of the pervious ones. The cards you obtain are, for the most part, selected rather than drawn, and the game features a variety of item cards with special abilities which will reward you for using them well. Gameplay takes place over the course of multiple rounds, resulting in a 30-45 minute game experience.
New York Slice
An interesting core mechanic derived from our real lives
This pizza-oriented game has players going around the table making tough choices between different slices of pizza, carefully weighing the strategic value of each one and the different ways they can use it.
The core mechanic of this game will be familiar to anyone who has ever shared a pizza. In New York Slice, pizza slice cards are randomly assembled into pizzas, which are then sliced into pieces by one player. The other players then go around having their choice of each of these slices, with the person who cut them getting to pick last.
This incentivizes them to create equally desirable slices, resulting in a lot of interesting strategic decisions for everyone involved. The players will be forced to weigh the different properties of each slice, both in general and for their specific strategies, before deciding what to do with them once they’ve been collected.
Beer & Bread
The most mechanically deep game on this list
This two-player strategic resource management game has players competing to create these two related but very different wheat products. With a variety of engaging mechanics representing things like changing crop yields, it provides a rich experience that will satisfy experienced gamers.
Beer & Bread is a resource management game that casts players as rival villages working to create the most bountiful crop of wheat products for their village to enjoy. Using relatively sophisticated resource management mechanics, they will grow and harvest wheat and other products needed for the creation of both bread and beer, and then use them to craft and sell both dishes.
This game will be a refreshing increase in complexity for experienced gamers who may not be interested in some of the more simplistic games on this list, though it’s unfortunate that the deepest game here can only accommodate two players rather than an entire gaming group. Still, if you have exactly one other gamer to share a relatively rich experience with, this is the game for you.
Ramen Fury: The Use-Your-Noodle Card Game
Simple but strategic
Ramen Fury is a simple but surprisingly intriguing card game that tasks players with creating and eating the best bowl of ramen they can construct, even as they attempt to sabotage other players’ attempts to do the same.
This card management strategy game tasks players with creating and eating the best bowl of ramen they can by acquiring and using the game’s various cards. The strategic depth of this game comes in the myriad ways to acquire cards and the choices players must make about how to use them. They can pick from a small selection of face-up cards or draw at random. They can steal from each other’s bowls, but only a limited number of times. They can eat their ramen now to protect it from such theft and get the points its worth, but it might be worth more if they save it for later.
These decisions give this game a lot of strategic depth despite its simplicity, resulting in a game that’s both approachable to casuals and fulfilling for serious gamers.
FAQ
What is the board game about recipes?
There are a couple you could be thinking of, but of the ones on this list, the best for learning recipes is MasterChef. It’s the only one of these games that represents a serious attempt to teach people to cook. The others just use the theme of food to frame or inspire their mechanics.
What’s a good board game for adults?
These games are, for the most part, made with children in mind to some extent, which is reflected in their limited mechanical complexity. Of these games, Beer and Bread and Ramen Fury are likely to be the most filling for serious gamers. That said, most of these games do have at least a little meat on their bones. MasterChef is the only one that appealsstrictlyto children.
