Tap a producer for ingredients. Merge and prepare them, discover recipes, then serve the finished dishes.
Start at Home with Papa
Home is your practice kitchen. Supplies are unlimited, Papa’s order never expires, and cooked food won’t burn. Use Help, Papa for a next step, or his portrait in a discovered recipe for a guided cook. Practice points stay at Home.
Take your skills into Town
Review Menu → Equipment → Stock before starting. Choose known recipes, equip their appliances, and pack compatible groceries. Town shifts have a cooking-turn budget, limited producer stock, and customer patience. Read the event’s goals and quoted costs first.
01 / MERGE & DISCOVER
Bring the right food together.
Drag one ingredient onto another, or tap an ingredient and then its destination. Matching ingredients with a next stage merge into one upgraded item. Recipe ingredients combine into a preparation or finished dish.
+→
Onion + Onion → Potato
Each successful merge or combination takes one cooking turn and uses both inputs. Ingredients that don’t form a merge or recipe simply swap places.
As lessons open more ingredients and equipment, making a new normal or secret recipe teaches it permanently. Special recipes come from their event rewards. Open Recipes to see what you know and what you can explore next.
02 / MANAGE YOUR TURNS
Your actions move the clock.
Timers advance with cooking turns, rather than real-world seconds. Producing food, merging, combining, cutting, portioning, and moving food onto or off heat each take a turn.
Ordinary board moves and swaps, reading recipes, taking orders, and serving are free. A refused action or cancelled drag spends nothing.
Use +1 step when a refill, cooking timer, or other preparation needs to advance. In Town, each cooking turn also reduces every accepted ticket’s patience. You need an active ticket to spend cooking turns there.
03 / PRODUCER CAPACITY & REFILLS
Pack the stock you want to draw.
In Town, each occupied cell in a producer’s grocery storage supplies one ingredient per refill. The ingredients come out in a shuffled order, without replacement. Empty storage cells don’t add stock; the grocery packs themselves are reusable.
4 filled cells = 4 taps. Even a nine-cell fridge only gives four onions per cycle if you pack four onion cells.
After its final item, a producer refills over five subsequent cooking turns. Cook something else or use +1 step. Tapping an empty, refilling, or blocked producer doesn’t advance its timer. Leave a free board cell for the next ingredient. A producer with no packed groceries stays empty.
How upgrades affect capacity
Standard storage grows from 2 × 2 at level 1 to 3 × 3 at level 2 and 4 × 4 at level 3: room for up to 4, 9, and 16 ingredient cells. More space only means more taps when you fill it with groceries. Storage size is separate from the appliance’s footprint on the cooking board; upgrades don’t shorten the five-turn refill.
Home’s unlimited practice supplies don’t use these Town stock limits.
Returning frozen food
Still-frozen food can go back into a Freezer with room in its stock capacity. Returning it takes one turn and restores one stock. That exact item comes out first when you tap again; the return doesn’t change your reusable grocery packs. Thawed food cannot be returned this way.
04 / THE KNIFE
Slice, dice, and portion.
Tap the knife, then tap an ingredient. Each successful cut takes one turn. Some ingredients need more than one cut to reach the form you want: Onion → Sliced Onion → Diced Onion.
The knife stays ready until you tap it again. It is reusable and has no durability or cooldown. Put it down when you want to select food normally.
A regular cut replaces the ingredient in its own cell, even on a full board. Bulk ingredients, such as a Side of Beef or Whole Chicken, release one portion per tap into an empty cell, so make room before portioning. Cut and combine food off the heat.
Your first dish: produce three onions. Merge two into a potato, cut the potato and remaining onion twice each, then combine Diced Potato + Diced Onion into Potato Salad.
05 / COOKING
Watch the heat.
Once you own and equip a Grill, move a suitable raw ingredient onto it. Placement takes one turn; the food then cooks over subsequent cooking turns. Each grill cell cooks independently, so prepare another ingredient while you wait.
In Town, a cooked item gets six further turns before burning. Move it off the grill while it is ready. Taking cooked food off heat keeps it safe; removing raw food early resets its cooking progress.
Moving onto, off, or between grill cells takes a turn. Putting cooked food back on heat doesn’t reset its remaining burn allowance. Burnt Food can’t be used in a dish. At Home, you can learn cooking times without food burning.
06 / CUSTOMER ORDERS
Accept, prepare, serve.
In Town, tap Take order to accept the next customer. You can hold up to six tickets. Patience starts when you accept an order; people still waiting in line have no countdown.
Drag a finished dish onto the ticket row to serve the highlighted matching order. Hover over a specific matching ticket to choose it. You can also tap a ticket and use Serve. Serving takes no turn.
A ticket expires at zero patience, even if that turn just finished its dish. In current Town events, the missed dish returns to the queue and is still part of the job. Prepare carefully before accepting more orders. Town cooking and refill timers pause when no accepted ticket remains.
07 / POINTS, STREAKS & DOLLARS
Serve well. Make every turn count.
Each dish has a base point value. Remaining customer patience adds up to 50% of that value. Consecutive serves multiply both parts: ×1 → ×2 → ×3 → ×4, staying at ×4 for further serves.
Serve points = (base + patience bonus) × streak
Cooking turns normally reset your streak, so having several dishes ready to serve together can pay off. Free board moves, taking orders, and reading recipes preserve it.
Potato Salad example: 700 base + 350 at full patience, with no cooking turns between serves.
Serve
Multiplier
Points
First
×1
1,050
Second
×2
2,100
Third
×3
3,150
Fourth onward
×4
4,200
Losses and quick finishes
Trashing one board object normally costs 25 points and resets the streak. An expired ticket loses its base points. The current score never falls below zero.
Complete a Town shift successfully with at least 25% of its turn budget left to earn a ×1.5 quick-finish score. Failed shifts and Home practice don’t receive it.
What reaches your wallet?
Town results convert 100 final points into $1.00, then subtract the event’s quoted hosting and provisions costs. The receipt shows your profit or loss. Uncovered costs carry forward and are paid by later earnings.
Restarting an unfinished Town shift settles that attempt and its costs. Returning Home keeps it available to resume. Home practice points never turn into Dollars.
These are the normal rules. Optional Golden Egg boosts can change a specific action; read the offered effect before spending Eggs.
What Golden Egg boosts do
Each of these boosts costs 1 Golden Egg. Applying the boost doesn’t spend a cooking turn.
Streak protection: keep your streak through one cooking action.
Clean discard: the next valid discard preserves points and your streak. Removing food from heat still takes a turn.
Extra patience: add one turn to a ticket’s remaining and maximum patience.
Refill nudge: remove one turn from a producer’s refill countdown.
Burn buffer: add one safe turn on the grill.
Un-burn food: restore the cooked item with a fresh burn allowance.
Guide to the current game rules. Your recipe book, producer counters, and event preview show the details for your kitchen.
