Review: Debut Project: Cooking Cafe Let Me Create Culinary Abominations

So I heard you like drinks, so I when I made your Heart Drink order, I added a cup of corn soup so you can have a drink with your drink. Not a fan of that? How about I put some garlic bread on top of your peach crepe? Need a well-rounded breakfast? I can put some ice cream with mint on top of your Omurice, with some scoops of matcha ice cream on the side. And you know what? You’ll love it and give me at least 500 likes, because that’s how Debut Project: Cooking Cafe rolls.

Debut Project: Cooking Cafe is a Cooking Mama-like game. Your character is the newest employee at a cafe that is heavily dependent on an Instagram sort of social network. Every dish you make gets shared there. Those likes and followers then in turn determine how the shop grows, when you get new types of foods to make, and if you become a rousing success. Making dishes in the same types of categories unlocks new “predetermined” items, which also unlocks new ingredients that can be used as extras for those foods and custom ones. By the way, after a certain point you can create your own custom meals, which get added to the menu as possible requests. Though also, people will come in saying they want a dish that meets a certain hashtag like “lookatthosegreenbeans” so that can post it online, which encourages madcap creations.

You have no idea how many times I’ve added karaage or fried shrimp to ice cream dishes or cakes. Why? Because I can.

The general process in Debut Project: Cooking Cafe can get a bit tedious. Each day, you start by being able to fulfill two orders. (This number goes up as you grow in notoriety and “improve.”) Every dish involves one Cooking Mama sort of cooking minigame, like perfectly pouring out pancake sizes or arranging items the right way on bread without it falling off. Once the main part of the meal is done, you can typically add at least two extras that consist of any unlocked items you’ve found so far, which shape the additional hashtags of the dish or perhaps help meet additional requests from a customer. You get experience for that particular dish, which can unlock more. Or accomplishing a certain number of tasks in a month clears challenges. Once the day is done, you come back the next day to do it all again. 

Of course, none of this is very difficult. Debut Project: Cooking Cafe is an incredibly relaxed and slow-paced simulation. The stakes could not be lower. I became a success by sticking raw shrimp on top of a chocolate pancake, surrounded by strawberries and egg salad, for crying out loud! My Flan Crepe is renowned for its karaage and carrot flower garnishes. It feels, for all intents and purposes, more like an excuse to be creative when plating. Especially since you do have the option to rotate and arrange all optional objects during the final touches. I wish there was a resizing option, but alas, there is not. 

The thing is, even though it isn’t difficult, can involve performing the same actions over and over again, and there aren’t tons of variations when it comes to different types of meals in the omurice, hamburg steak, sandwich, cake, ice cream, crepe, drink, and pancake categories, it’s that creativity that allowed me to make my own fun. I’m a very easily amused individual! (This is clearly evidenced by the fact that I will always add the mug of corn soup to any drink recipe I send out of my kitchen.) Sometimes, when things are hectic and I’m going to sit on a plane for 10 hours or be stuck waiting for editing work to come in, I want to completely cover an ice cream sundae in French fries. I liked when the cafe expanded, even though it didn’t really mean too much for my day-to-day, just because it meant there were more possible orders to choose from when selecting what unholy meal to unleash on the world next.

Debut Project: Cooking Cafe is a silly, joyful game that encourages someone to be creative. Or to commit food crimes. It isn’t as varied as the Cooking Mama series when it comes to minigames. However, it makes up for that by letting someone be as unhinged as possible during certain steps of the cooking and baking process, resulting in the most ridiculous recipes. I really appreciate everything it does. 

Debut Project: Cooking Cafe is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC.