Dinner in Paris: Battle of the Chefs

Dinner in Paris was a 2020 hit from “The Trolls” and published by FunnyFox. It had players competing to collect ingredients, to open up restaurants and expand their terraces whilst competing for the limited space available on the Parisian Square.

At times it could be mean as you can cut off your opponents and position yourself in such a way as to limit their potential reach. A full review of the core game can be found here but in essence the game features elements of set collection, hand management and area majority with end game bonuses and in game objectives. I loved Dinner in Paris, it was a fantastic game that doesn’t get as much love as it deserves.

Well, Dinner in Paris may get a new lease of life with the latest expansion, Battle of the Chefs. This adds a bunch of content such as new pigeon cards, majority cards, objectives cards and new food trucks as well as the relevant tiles to go with the pigeon cards.

The expansion does not majorly change the way the game plays with you pretty much doing the same thing as in the base game. The new cards can be mixed in with the core cards with relative ease. The biggest change would be the addition of the food trucks. These can be built like regular restaurants (although not as profitable) but can be placed in the center of the board. In the core game, restaurants could only be built on the edges of the square. The addition of the food trucks breaks this rule. Just like regular restaurants, terrace tiles can be extended from your food trucks as well.

The new pigeon cards are additional ways to interact and cause issues for your opponents such as unhappy customer tokens, spoiled food, damn pigeons and under construction tokens which just get in your opponents way in various ways.

Final Thoughts

Battle of the Chefs kind of does what it says on the box really. It adds a bunch of new content that is designed to encourage player interaction. If the competition over restaurant spaces and terraces were not enough for you in the core game, then the expansion ramps it up for sure.

The food trucks can simply be used to help you gain what you need for objectives. Or they can be used to block your opponents expansion and limit their potential objective scoring. They add new restrictions on what is an already tight board.

Aggressive Pigeons

The new pigeon cards feel a lot more aggressive than the ones in the core game. A lot of the new pigeon cards involve adding tokens or mechanisms to hinder your opponents. You can steal ingredients, create noise pollution or send some pigeons to, well….do what pigeons do best, and make for a very unpleasant dining experience for your customers. It adds another level of interaction that was not in the core game.

Overall, the expansion simply adds more chaos, more interaction, more spice (if you will forgive the food reference) and a heck of a lot more fun into the game. Dinner in Paris was already a relatively interactive game (or at least it could be, if you played it that way) and the expansion expands on that. You now have more ways to dominate the Parisian Square and become the best restaurant owner in Paris. But what lengths will you go to become the best?

If you enjoyed the core game then the expansion Battle of the Chefs is definitely worth checking out, especially if you want that extra level of interaction.