Friday, March 28, 2025

This is the tenth installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season.

How to end a week like this one? There are lots of ways, but the way I’m going to do it is like this. Cooking and food has always been important to me, and so have video games, and because of the wild creativity that’s out there in the gaming world, both of those interests can come together. This issue will cover some of my favorite cooking-themed games!

Cook, Serve, Delicious! (1)

The original and premier fast-paced restaurant sim game, it’s been extended into a series but I’ll always prefer the first one, not only because I’ve bought it about 10 times through various bundles over the years, but also because it’s the best. Designed to be used with controllers rather than a keyboard, you assemble recipes for an endless stream of customers, making every order a challenge. It saves itself from being repetitive by nearly requiring you to change the menu between each round, and a large variety of dishes makes it interesting every time. Plus, there’s a kitchen battle mode where you can play as characters from other games, like Shovel Knight!

Cooking Mama: Cook Off

This series saw a lot of mileage on the Nintendo DS back in the day, but the version I played was on the Wii. Waving around the Wii Remote to peel carrots and grind meat was one of the first experiences I had with the console, and it was definitely one of the best. There’s a two-player mode also, if you want to stir virtual eggs with chopsticks with a friend.

Battle Chef Brigade

This is it. The ultimate. Heavily inspired by Iron Chef, and probably Delicious in Dungeon as well, this is a game where you go kill a dragon in a 2D brawler battle, then cook up its meat in a Match-3 puzzle game. There’s even a plot, too, with the monsters that the people rely on for food becoming corrupted somehow through dark magic. The storybook art style is just amazing, and the Chairman Kaga-inspired judge changes his outfit in every round of battle. Simply fantastic.

That’s it, this cooking week is over! Go enjoy the weekend and you’ll hear from me again on Monday.

Do you have any favorite cooking-themed games?