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Have you wanted to channel your inner Gordon Ramsey and swear blindly at your family members as they steal the ingredients you needed to finish that winning recipe, well now you can in the 2 - 6 player game Rival Restaurants.
In this fast and frantic game of competing restaurants, each player is battling it out to be the most popular spot in town by staggering the foodies with new and exotic recipes. You are shopping and bartering with the locals, swapping ingredients and recipes, rushing to remove the trash from your kitchens, all the while trying to complete your recipes as fast as possible to gain that oh so important popularity.
Everything is centred around a large market in the centre of the table which is made up of 5 mains stalls from which to buy ingredients. There is also a special stall which sells weird and wonderful ingredients such as alien goo or chocolate, and then in the centre is "the island" where you can purchase upgrades for your restaurants and get rid of that ever growing trash from your kitchens.
Each round is based around 3 phases each comprising of different elements, the first phase is :
Money & Move
In this phase, you'll recieve your daily income and then choose in secret where you wish to shop using handy little dials. Each player then reveals which location they wish to shop and set their cardboard cut out chefs , on the ingredients in the location they wish to shop, if ever 2 players pick the same market stall and ingredient in the next phase they will have to partake in a vicous bidding war to be successful or roll over and try there luck picking up a facedown Ingredient from the market. The next phase is :
Buy & Barter
This is where the chaos ramps up as you only get 1 minute to do your shopping, bartering and general deal making. All players take their turn simultaneously and as the timer is flipped you are rushing about like Dale Winton has just let off a Claxon and you are grabbing Ingredients, screaming requests at your now cowering nan and trying to see what everyone else is buying and hoping they want to give you their only carrot for one of the multiple avocados you have. We then move to the final phase :
Cook & Counter
And this is where all your screaming and bidding comes to fruition and nan can relax as no one will be screaming give me your onions at her in full voice. You can now use the ingredients you've acquired to make recipes and try to gain popularity, you then have to do a bit of clean up restock the markets and it all starts again.
The game ends when someone manages to reach 20 popularity on their restaurant track and is declared the Weiner!
Final thoughts
Rival Restaurants is a brilliantly fun, face paced chaotic set collection/card drafting game, the art is full of humour and the asymmetrical chefs and restaurants keep you coming back for more. The game has an almost party game feel like someone has invented a solid modern board game and sprinkled it with some party game dust, which just really works.