Cooking Games Online: Orders, Timing and Upgrades
Updated
Cooking games online come at two speeds. Restaurant games send customers with orders and a limit on how long they will wait, so the skill is reading each order and serving in the right sequence; recipe games walk you through one dish, step by step, with no clock. Most play with a mouse click or a tap. Below is how orders, timing and upgrades work, with games from the cooking games category.
Kinds of cooking games
| Kind | What you do | Try first |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant rush | Take orders, cook and serve before customers lose patience | Super Burger 2 |
| Restaurant manager | Spend what you earn on tables, stations and staff | Restaurant Rush |
| Step-by-step recipe | Follow the steps of one dish and decorate it | Cake Master Shop |
| Free design | Build a dish however you like | Pizza Maker - Food Cooking |
Restaurant cooking games belong to the time management genre. Wikipedia's article on time management games describes them as reacting to incoming requests and serving them in the most effective way, and names the 1983 arcade game Tapper, where a bartender serves patrons before their patience runs out, as the prototype. The restaurant games below work the same way.
How orders work
Every restaurant game shows you what each customer wants, how long they will wait, and what you earn for getting it right.
- Beach Restaurant shows each order as pictures on the customer, and warns that some customers are impatient and do not like to wait.
- Super Burger 2 asks you to deliver burger orders on time, across World 1 and World 2, plus a time trial mode where you make as many burgers as you can.
- Pizza Master Chef gives every customer a different pizza order, and its own advice is to pay attention to all the details.
- Kitchen King Rush has you cook, plate and deliver on time; happy customers leave big tips.
- Cooking Truck - Food truck worldwide cuisine has you tap the ingredients shown to build each burger. Customers are generous when you are quick, and you tap the coins they leave to collect them.
- Burger Rush Restaurant works the same way: click the ingredients to make the burger, then click the customer to serve it.
Timing habits for the rush
- Read the whole order before you touch an ingredient. A wrong dish costs more time than a slow one.
- Serve the customer who has waited longest first, unless another order is already finished.
- Keep every station working. If a dish cooks on its own timer, start the next order while you wait.
- Throw away a mistake rather than serve it. In My Restaurant Empire you double tap to throw away a dish on a plate, tap to start cooking and tap to serve.
- Collect money as you go. Cooking Truck leaves the coins on the counter until you tap them.
- Save boosts for the busiest moment. Karas Cafeteria, where you seat customers, take their orders to the chef and serve the meals, rewards good multitasking with energy boosts that make you faster.
What to upgrade first
Restaurant games pay you in coins, and the coins buy upgrades between or during levels. The order you buy them in matters.
- Dream Kitchen rates levels up to 3 stars, pays coins, and spends them on kitchen equipment and new recipes, across chapters such as a Pancake Shop, a Street Stall, a Fast Food Restaurant and a Western Restaurant.
- Beach Restaurant has a career mode and a free mode; the money improves your shop and brings in more customers.
- Cooking Street pays gold coins from happy customers, which upgrade the restaurant.
- Dream Restaurant Tycoon has you pick up food from the correct station and deliver the right order, then spend on tables, expansions and drive-thrus.
- Restaurant Rush starts as a small burger joint. You buy cooking stations, hire workers and decide when to expand.
Upgrade what slows you down before you add seats. A faster grill or a second station lets you serve the customers you already have; more tables only bring more people to wait. Once the kitchen keeps up, expand.
Some restaurant games run themselves once you hire staff. Restaurant Tycoon has managers for automatic work, kitchens and an elevator to upgrade, and keeps earning while you are away. Idle Restaurant Tale starts as a street food bar, has you hire staff and upgrade machines, and runs across 11 cities and more than 100 levels. The habits for these are in idle and clicker games.
Recipe games: no clock, just steps
Recipe games take the pressure off. You make one dish from start to finish, and the challenge is following the steps.
- Cake Master Shop has you put the ingredients in bowls, blend them, bake, then add fresh fruit, with over 15 kitchen tools.
- Baking Pizza makes a heart-shaped pizza: make the sauce, grate the cheese, cut the vegetables, then serve.
- Romantic Wedding Cake Master asks you to draw the design first, then make the cake, then decorate it.
- Icing On The Cake Online gives you a finished cake to decorate, and the aim is to paint the cream as close to the recipe as you can.
- Pizza Maker - Food Cooking lets you design your own pizza with whatever you like on it.
- Cooking Cafe has you choose a dish from the menu, buy the missing ingredients, then click or hold at the right moment as you cook.
In a copy-the-recipe game like Icing On The Cake Online, look at the target before each stroke, not after. In a free-design game, there is nothing to get wrong.
Common mistakes
- Starting to cook before reading the full order.
- Leaving a station idle while you wait on another.
- Serving a wrong dish instead of throwing it away and starting again.
- Buying more tables before the kitchen can keep up.
- Forgetting to collect coins in games that leave them on the counter.
Cooking games FAQ
How do you get 3 stars in cooking games?
Each game sets its own rule, so read the level goal first; Dream Kitchen, for one, rates every level out of 3 stars. What helps in any restaurant game is fewer wrong dishes and shorter waits: read the order, serve the longest-waiting customer, and upgrade the slowest station.
Can you play cooking games on a phone?
Yes. The games above play with a tap as well as a mouse click, and Cooking Truck and My Restaurant Empire describe their controls as taps. The site works in the browser of a phone, a tablet and a computer.
Do cooking games cost anything?
No. They play free, right in the browser, with no install and no registration, and there are no in-game purchases on the site.
Are there cooking games without a timer?
Yes. The recipe games above, such as Cake Master Shop and Pizza Maker - Food Cooking, describe no clock: you make one dish at your own pace.
More kitchens are in the cooking games category, and other run-a-business games are in simulation games.
