Rival Restaurants Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Rival Restaurants, a real time, set collection game published by Gap Closer Games. In Rival Restaurants, players are working fast and frantic to complete orders and earn victory points.

This is a guest post from Christopher Biewer. 

My family and I watch a lot of Top Chef. Initially, I wondered what could be fun about watching a competition TV show about people making food that I can’t eat, but once I started watching I was hooked by the characters, the relationships, the new foods, the history, Padma’s outfits… So, when I saw a Kickstarter for Rival Restaurants, a competitive board game about making food that I can’t eat, I knew I had to back it.

Rival Restaurants is technically a real-time auction-style, set collecting board game, but depending on player count is more of a card drafting game than auction. (More on that later). It’s listed as 2-8 players, for this review I have played with 2-6 players, finding my ideal player count of 4.

The object of the game is to become the first restaurant to earn 20 popularity points (visualized as the old thumbs up emoji from now on referred to as “likes,” because PP is an abbreviation that will just make me giggle) and be crowned the “Wiener.” (Their pun not mine, and yes I giggled). This is accomplished by buying and/or bartering for ingredients to complete recipes to earn the “likes.” All chefs have two recipes, a Basic Recipe and a Gourmet Recipe. The more complicated the recipe the more “likes” (good) and garbage (bad) are generated.

Gameplay consists of three phases each “day”

These three phases are repeated each day until one chef has 20 popularity points. This can be made easier or harder by using your chef’s unique power, an action card, or by purchasing