5 Best Cooking Games Like Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator

If the wisps and fumes from the culinary arts call to you frequently, then you’ll be pleased to know that Cyanide Studio is rustling up something fresh for consoles and PC. Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator, much like other cooking sims, puts you behind the pots and pans of an up-and-coming eatery, a world in which you are tasked with earning Michelin Stars through the power of fine dining and quality gourmet dishes.

Sure enough, Chef Life isn’t the only game that centers its universe around the art of food; in fact, there are plenty of simulators that let you live out such a dream—and for surprisingly low prices, too. So, if you’re not able to get your fill from Cyanide Studio’s latest works, then be sure to spend a little time with these five Chef Life lookalikes.

5. Cooking Simulator

If you’d much rather avoid the hustle and bustle of the front of house position in your booming business, then you could always opt to stay in the kitchen in Cooking Simulator. That’s the beauty of it, really, as it basically removes the business simulation aspect out of the mix and instead lets you manage every element in the kitchen itself. And as far as in-depth and most life-like cooking games go, Big Cheese Studio’s creation truly is, well, the big cheese, so to speak.

Cooking Simulator gives you the keys to an entire jam-packed pantry of ingredients, meats, utensils, and just about everything you could ever want in your own ultimate fantasy kitchen. Cookbooks are, of course, optional, as you’ll come to learn as you make creations beyond your wildest dreams with an ever-evolving storage room crammed to the brim with sweet treats, savouries, and all things edible. Question is, with so many ingredients to choose from, what will you make to serve to your curious customers?

4. The Sims 4: Dine Out

If you’re an avid follower of The Sims 4, then you’ll no doubt know of its slew of Stuff Packs and themed expansions, many of which let you build and customize various new in-game features. A perfect example of a quality cooking-based expansion here would be Dine Out, an add-on that lets your townies not only fill the neighborhood with restaurants, but also manage each and every asset.

Dine Out brings all the same sandbox tools that tie in with other Sims expansions, only with more features that lean towards restauranteering and entrepreneurship. As a proud owner of a newly established fine dining restaurant, you will have the chance to customize it to suit your personal needs, build an award-winning menu, and turn an otherwise empty plot of land into a thriving empire based on hearty food and aesthetics.

3. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! is a simulator that knows exactly how to add spice to an otherwise flavorless and overused dish. Much like its previous instalments, the premise of the game is to travel across a war-torn America in your trusty meals-on-wheels motor, and essentially serve up tasty treats for citizens using an endless supply of ingredients.

As for what you can actually make for your customers is another story, as you’ll come to learn as you open the book up on some of the freshest and most mouth-watering edible innovations of all time. With a country full of hungry folk looking for a hearty meal and a cookbook capable of whipping up copious amounts of wholesome foods, you will work to become not only the local chef, but America’s go-to connoisseur.

2. Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game

If Overcooked and Two Point Campus merged into one product, then it’d probably look a little something like Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game. To put it simply, the cutesy tycoon title takes all the business and building simulation features that you’d typically find in, say, Two Point or Dine Out, and builds on them by throwing in fast-paced gameplay and slapstick humor by the boatload.

Your goal in Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon Game is not only to take one chunk of the world and transform it into your own culinary paradise, but to conquer the entire monopoly and fill it with every possible cuisine in the book. From luxury eateries to fast food burger joints, your expertise in the field will help pave the way for a new era of dining experiences.

1. Ravenous Devils

Ravenous Devils is a little unorthodox compared to most usual cooking simulators, mostly down to the fact that it substitutes cured meats for raw flesh, and fine dining for out-of-the-box human pies and other baked products. Think Sweeny Tod: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but compressed into a side-scrolling business management sim, and you’ll have a rough idea of what Bad Vices Games’ grizzly creation is all about.

It isn’t quite on the same wavelength as Chef Life as far as gameplay goes, but Ravenous Devils definitely brings plenty to the table, and it’s oddities are what make it the real treat that it is. Sure, it’s a little gory in places, and it’s definitely not anything like your bog-standard restaurant tycoon game, but it is a one-of-a-kind experience nonetheless. So, if you’ve ever fancied the idea of running your own underground meat factory under the guise of a family eatery, then you needn’t look any further than Ravenous Devils.

So, what’s your take? Do you agree with our top five? Are there any cooking simulators you’d recommend? Let us know over on our socials here or down in the comments below.