Fine Dining Fraud

Fine Dining Fraud is a chaotic co-op cooking game for 1–6 players. You run a fine-dining restaurant despite being unable to cook and owing money to the mafia: serve picky guests, bluff your way through mistakes and keep Don Metlloviconi’s envelope full. He comes to collect every third day.

Run the kitchen

Name your restaurant and open a supposedly luxurious venue in a building that was cheap for a reason. The menu includes toast, hot dogs, packet soup, fried cheese, steak, schnitzel with fries and three kinds of frozen pizza, all listed under much longer names.

You buy equipment, carry crates inside and arrange your kitchen, moving counters, grills and shelves wherever you want. You can add duplicates such as a second toaster or another stack of plates, but supplies and equipment can cause trouble: plates run out, food gets cold, soup burns and the freezer door locks from the outside.

Serve and bluff

Seat guests, hand out menus, take orders, clip tickets to the rail and carry dishes through the pass, including whole stacks if you dare. When an order is wrong or a steak is burnt, choose an excuse card and try to sell it as a deconstructed signature dish. Your microphone determines how convincing you sound, and the grandpa at table 3 requires you to shout.

Critics, gourmets, nervous first dates, football fans and occasional celebrities come with different expectations. Theme nights include romantic dinners, football fans after a match, gourmet night, pensioners’ lunch and company parties.

Handle disasters

Fires, oil spills, food poisoning, guest rushes and a badly timed intercom can disrupt an evening. If you leave a fire burning, smoke fills the kitchen; left longer, it pours out of the restaurant into the night sky. You can slap someone blocking a doorway with a tray of soup, but not the guests.

Each chapter ends with a boss evening: a very thorough health inspector, a mafia wedding, dinner with the Don himself and, finally, the Michelin inspector.

Play together

Online co-op supports 1–6 players. Proximity voice chat lets you whisper in the kitchen and panic in the dining room, and each player can use their own language. You can also visit friends’ restaurants as a guest, sit down, order and judge them while they try to bluff their way through your visit.

Build your reputation

Earn stars, read reviews and respond to them politely or otherwise. The number of guests depends on the day, your stars and your marketing. You can buy chairs, put up posters around town and purchase a city banner; guests who give up while waiting in line do not cost you stars.

Buy furniture and upgrades, move tables, the menu stand and the piano, and paint pictures for the walls. You can expand into Le Salon by knocking through into the neighboring building, adding space for more tables and bigger evenings. You can also hire Jean-Pierre. The goal is to earn a Michelin star before anyone tastes the food.