My copy of Kitchen Rush arrived today, and as luck would have it, it’s also our new day for doing boardgaming, so we broke that right out. It is a real-time coop of running a restaurant, a similar idea to Wok Star, which I also own, but more complex and I think more rewarding.
Basically, you start with 3 coins in hand, four orders on deck, and a goal you need to meet in orders filled, money earned, and prestige accumulated within four rounds. Each round, you begin with Prep, where you look at your available orders, ingredients, spices, and cash and try to strategize what you’ll do. Then you go to the Action phase, where you start a timer and have four minutes to take orders, source new orders, fill plates, cook orders, add spices, shop for ingredients and spices, wash dishes, perform office admin, maybe even fill orders promptly…and in addons, perhaps serve wine, clean up for health inspections, or cater to food critics. Finally, when time expires, you finish any action you were actively performing and then move to Cleanup, where you verify your orders are correct and fully fulfilled in order to score them (or lose prestige if you didn’t finish them and possibly waste the effort and ingredients if you made an unfixable mistake), and then pay your staff and maybe even have an operating budget for next turn.
To accomplish these things, each player has two hourglasses. During the four minute action phase, you start the hourglasses going and place them on action spaces. You can immediately take that action - and take as long as you need to to perform it - but you cannot then move or do the action again until the hourglass has emptied. You also cannot share spaces except for shopping. To fill orders you first act as a waiter and take the order (one action per order), with associated plate size or one size larger for each plate on the order. Then you need to assemble the ingredients. This takes an action in one of (up to) three Storage areas, whereupon you can add as many ingredients as you need from that particular Storage. But only that particular storage. if they’re not all there, it’s either a second action in a different one, or shopping (but someone already shopping can add while you’re still in storage.) If you get the ingredient count/set wrong you can still fix it until you start cooking. You also need to take an action to add spices (where called for), which are sourced from a bag - not randomly, but it means it takes time to check what’s in stock and grab them. These can be added at any point in the proceedings. Finally, you have to cook - one action per plate per stage of cooking required.
Of course, all of the above assumes you’re in tip top shape - dishes clean, storage areas laden with all the ingredients you need, and spice bag full of glorious spices. If not, well, it’s an action (and a coin) to shop and obtain - 5 ingredients of a single type distributed as you decide between storage areas; 3 basic spices in any combination; or 2 exotic spices in any combination. (A mini-expansion adds fish, which are bought 3 at a time and expire every round if not successfully used in an order.) Or an action to clean any 3 plates for use. And all of these are happening in real time, with limited action spaces, delays between actions, and simple tangling of arms trying to put things where they need to go.
Oh, and every hourglass you use (including 1-2 Helpers that don’t belong to any player in particular)? Costs 3 coin at the end of a round. Can’t pay? You lose prestige and the use of that worker until you can - and it takes either an office action to rehire them (w/ 2 coin) or having the coin at the end of a round - you must pay back pay if you can.
Our goal was (on easy), 28 orders filled, 16 coin earned, and 8 prestige. We almost hit 20, almost had 8 prestige, and had no money at all, at the end of our second game. (Much better than our first try, though.) It’s rough! And we didn’t even add in the events (all negative), health inspections, food critics, fish recipes (the second time, anyway) or wine.