Ore no Ryomi 2 had the basic idea for a menu down pretty well: all the American items, a dessert, two drink options, and you’re set. With this new game, I’ve had to figure out just how much farther I wanted to take the menu in terms of exotic dishes, and whether they’d make sense in a game like this.

First off I can confirm that all of the foods from ONR2 are back here, with many getting complete overhauls. It never made sense to make the burger and then cook it, for example, so in many instances foods have a “prep” segment where you have to grill up the meats. You won’t have to flip the paddies or anything like that, just throw the right meat on the grill and you’re set to go. Other foods that weren’t necessarily fun or profitable to do (the fries/fried chicken) have also changed.

But aside from all that, there are a number of new foods to complement the new goals of this game: running a restaurant from a zero star eatery to a five star delicacy. With that in mind, there are some “cheap foods” that you can buy to establish a customer base and add easy income, like soft pretzels. And then you have your “gourmet foods” like fish to appeal to the wine & dine crowd.

Also new to the game is the process of “upgrading” certain foods from one star status to higher tier stars. Certain foods, like a corn dog, will always be an un-upgradeable, one star food. But other foods, like the nachos and burger, can go all the way up to four-five stars. By upgrading foods, you’ll use fresher ingredients which allows you to charge more for each order. You’ll also get a bonus ingredient, which increases the number of recipes you can make with the food. ONR2 had somewhere around 80 recipes for the entire game, whereas Cook, Serve, Delicious has over 300 that I’ve mapped out so far. These aren’t randomly generated, either: I had to hand craft each recipe on my own. Some were simple to do (ice cream orders) others not so much (you’ll make nachos ranging from Extreme Fajitas to the Super Sour Veggie nachos), but it was quite fun either way.

Next week I’ll get into the overall goal of the game, and how you’ll progress. Until then, eat delicious!