Part 17: One last cup of coffee

Episode 16: One last cup of coffee


Welcome to the final mission of the game!



…Now again, what are the things that you need to remember when it comes to making cheese fondue?

That I should keep the fondue warm in very low heat so that I don't accidentally scorch the cheese or overheat the oil.

And?

Uhh… put a small amount of lemon juice in the wine to help break up the cheese.

And finally?

Uhh… umm… stirring in zig zag motion!! I should stir it in zig zags rather than circular motions so that I can break down the cheese better.

…

Chef Armand?

You're ready.

Chef… I… I don't know how to repay you sir.

You're ready.

I'll make you proud Chef.

I know you will.



What? We're at the end? Now? Yes! It's payback time! OmniFood humbled Armand once before at the Grandmaster cooking contest, but now Armand and his apprentice are going to face them one last time and take back the crown!

I mean, I guess that's what's going on. The game doesn't explain what this is about, but I assume this is about revenge and/or redemption.

There are four rounds to this contest: French, Italian, American and German. We are only allowed to enter with Armand and Ozkan. Fortunately I have been moving Armand around to get varied cooking experience, otherwise we would be in a real pickle! Ozkan will naturally be completely useless here, and I wish I could replace him with someone who is good at German or American food, but what are you going to do.



Note that even though there is an Italian cooking part of this final showdown, we have never had an Italian restaurant. It is actually impossible to be adequately prepared for that part of the contest. Luckily, however, we have some French/Italian and American/Italian recipes that we can use.



Armand and Ozkan enter the arena! They are very excited.



On the opposing team we find Sergio from OmniFood, the fastest chef in the business because of his four arms.



And Edmund Valron, the president of OmniFood, is the leader of the third team. OmniFood are so devious that they are entering the contest with two separate teams in order to increase their chances.



As usual, the French round is likely to be our strongest, since we started the game with what is quite possibly the best recipe in the game: the stuffed lamb in a potato crust with truffles.



Luckily, for plot reasons because of their hubris and overconfidence, OmniFood now score about twenty points lower than they did the last time we faced them in the Grandmaster contest!



Naturally, our best Italian recipe is, um, French fries.



Very good French fries!



Strangely, the fries are also our best American recipe. What is in those fries? Anyway, three pounds of fries should be more than enough for anyone, so I'm going to make the guilt free cappuccino sundae instead, which is a recipe that I have a soft spot for.



There is no guilt in crushing those who have DARED to cross Armand!



Let' deliver the coup de grâce with the salmon in a spinach cloak with caviar cream which we recently researched. Armand doesn't cook it perfectly yet, but it's such a high-quality recipe that it's better than anything else we can make.




We are redeemed!



But you didn't think that that was it, I hope! Because we still have the true final challenge before us.



I guess this is it, huh?

Just remember Jules, it's okay to lose. It won't be the end of the world if they don't like it.

Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence sis!

Hey c'mon, I didn't say you weren't going to make it! I'm just saying that your talent can never be measured by just a piece of paper. Whatever happens, I'll always be here for you.

We will always be here for you Jules.

Armand, you made it!!

It's your big day isn't it? Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Break a leg, girls!



This is the final challenge of the game. A 100% patisserie-based cooking contest. This is a little inconvenient if you didn't invest in any patisserie recipe research because patisseries are useless and unprofitable and awful and no I'm not bitter what are you talking about

I mentioned at some point in the thread that there are three broad categories of recipe research that are completely useless and total wastes of money.

One is breakfast recipes. You sell extremely few breakfast recipes, and because of that, it's very difficult to train your cooking skill with breakfast recipes. One notable good breakfast recipe is the recipe for three pounds of fries, but that's a recipe you buy off your customers, and Armand has been practising that forever.

The second one is Italian food. You never get an Italian restaurant in this game, so even if you get an awesome Italian recipe, your chefs can't practice and get good at cooking it.

The third one is coffee shop recipes. There is never any kind of contest that you need to win using café recipes. Our very first place of business was a café, they play a large role in the game's story, and they are Delia's entire thing in this game, but she never gets a chance to shine, and she remains completely useless through the entire story.



But thanks to our wise investment in patisserie recipes and keeping all our patisseries up to date with the best possible desserts, we are well-prepared for this final challenge!



Round one is cakes, pies and tarts. We are entering with the marble cake.



They are NOT messing around on this final challenge, by the way! We are using the best cake recipe available and cooking it at a cooking skill of 100%, and yet we're only tied with our closest rival. This is much harder than Armand's little cooking thing earlier. This is the big leagues.



Round two is cookies and pastries. Our best recipe is the cheese éclair, but Jules' cooking skill with the almond waffles with strawberries is better, so I'm sticking with this.



We've pulled ahead of the competition, but not by much.



For the ice cream and "soberts" round, the classic nougat parfait with honey and strawberries should be our best bet.



More and more breathing room. And our strongest round is yet to come!



For the puddings and gelatin round we are making the Swiss roll, which I still maintain is neither a pudding nor gelatin.



The other teams are stepping up their game, but not enough, I think.



Finally, our best patisserie recipe: coffee with milk.



Butt coffee, naturally.




Jules is the top pâtissière of all time!



So Armand, network's been trying to get me in meetings lately ever since your book hit the stands. Hollywood's knocking on your door again my man. Any chance you might reconsider?

Haha! Sounds like another disaster waiting to happen! But I was serious when I said I was thankful for my friends, so I'll humor you George… I'll think about it.

Haha good boy, this time it'll be on our terms! I'll make the arrangements my friend…


"Where did I leave that spare set of wax wings?"



Sweetie are you coming?

Say hi to your wife for me.




Will do my friend. That I'll do.



Everyone, everyone! I'd like to thank you all for springing this wonderful surprise: this lovely cake in front of me made by my equally lovely sister-in-law – the new Hall of Fame Chef!

Cheers Armand!

I must say it's been a real bumpy ride this past year. I've… no we, Delia and I, have gone through some very high highs and absolutely low lows over the last months and to be perfectly honest, I'm glad it's over!

Love ya hon!

I feel like with the launch of this book and the upcoming birth of our baby, my life really has come full circle.

I've finally realised that for all my ambition and success in this world, nothing amounts to much…

…without a great staff to put up with me…

… and of course without great staffs to put up with me.

Jimmy?: To the master!

…without my friends supporting me…

… without my best friends supporting me…

Hear, hear!

…without my family standing beside me…

Proud of you sweetie!

I feel blessed. And the truth is I'm thankful for all that's happened. I wouldn't be who I am now if fate didn't throw a curveball.

To Armand



Everyone: To Armand



And so it was for Armand and Delia –

life threw them a curveball and they were there to catch it.

In time, the baby Lebouf will grow to idolize his father

and the father will come to see the greatness of his son.

For now though, the child's first birthday will close the tale.

Some say Armand had it lucky. He had talent.

But who can know for certain if he chose differently in life?

They say that fortune smiles on the brave.

In Armand's case, the saying couldn't be truer.



That is one creepy-ass baby.

But that's the end of Restaurant Empire 2! It came very suddenly - I guess they ran out of plot. I especially enjoyed the whitewashing of Armand's shittiness as "fate throwing them a curveball". Now everybody loves Armand!

So what's the verdict on Restaurant Empire 2? I thought it was a worthy successor to Restaurant Empire 1. It repeatedly tops Restaurant Empire 1's weird restaurants with absolutely weird shit like the German Formula One racing restaurant and the idea of a circus/rainforest restaurant. And with the exception of the hundreds of variations on coffee beans plus one other ingredient which made up the café recipe list, the other new restaurant types had plenty of weird and terrible recipes.

What baffles me the most is the story. I don't know why this goofy restaurant simulation game needed a dark family drama, but I'm very glad it was there! If they ever make Restaurant Empire 3 (they won't), I can't wait to find out in what bizarre direction they'll take the plot.

Restaurant retrospective

As in the Restaurant Empire 1 LP, I'd like to go over our many terrible (and few not-so-terrible) restaurants and thank everyone who contributed to them.

Delia's First Coffee Shop



This is Delia's first coffee shop, the imaginatively named Delia's First Coffee Shop. It's one of the only restaurants that we managed to make slightly less awful.



This restaurant was also the inception of the Armand shrine, which became less and less appropriate as the game went on!

Treize à Table



Treize à Table was our first genuine restaurant, the original French restaurant where Armand started his career. To this day it is still our most profitable restaurant, although our later German restaurants came very close.

Delacourt Sunset



This is a very weird coffee shop. Buying and outfitting this also put us inches away from actual bankruptcy, as I managed to spend all our money and didn't have access to any credit yet.



But you can't put a price on a place like this.

Delacourt Rodeo



This one's like a weird modern library. I don't know. The options for modern-style cafés in this game are very limited.

Also, is "Delacourt" a reference to some famous French café-related person, or did they not even try to spell Delecoeur correctly?

La Lune Vague



This is Ozkan's French restaurant. Ozkan's story never really went anywhere, did it? Maybe I should have let him cook something in the final contest, just as a courtesy.

I Heart Cake



This is our nightmarish patisserie, I Heart Cake. It's by far our least successful restaurant. I believe it's made a monthly loss for several ingame years now. It's shockingly terrible. It doesn't help that the walls and carpet make it look like something out of Lovecraftian horror.



I still dig those flan tables, though.

Amo La Torta



This is our second patisserie where Jules is currently working. This one is doing significantly better than I Heart Cake and actually manages to turn a small profit. Nothing comparable to a real restaurant, obviously, but she's trying her best.

Heiliger Klaus



This is the Merkel dungeon! An excellent, highly profitable restaurant that helped save us from financial ruin. I imagine the restaurant manager complains often about his profitable German restaurant having to give bailouts to our terrible and unproductive cake and coffee economies.



The second floor with our highly efficient Rauten configuration.

The Speed Trap



Our most beautiful restaurant, The Speed Trap. The trick is to order enough wine to render yourself blind so you don't have to look at it.



This floor would be outrageously ugly in any other restaurant. At The Speed Trap, it's a respite.

Delia's Aqua



I hate this restaurant. But I love the décor! No matter how awful that mission was, it's a restaurant with nineteen sharks. And that's got to count for something.



We must get so many complaints about this.

Rain and Forest Grill



It's always carnival at the Rain and Forest Grill!



Unless you're one of those customers.

The Congo Flame



This one started out as a pretty cool restaurant. Which is why it's such a shame that I had to demolish half of it to make space for the ridiculous scene for the circus troupe that we ended up firing anyway.



I don't know how, but the restaurant actually makes pretty healthy profits despite serving nothing but wine and $4.20 bread soup. I guess you guys were on to something!


We have reached the end of Restaurant Empire 2 and the Restaurant Empire series. Thanks to everyone who voted on décor, who made menu or decoration recommendations, everyone who helped out with great texture edits, as well as everyone who read and enjoyed the LP!
I only now realise that I never once used that emoticon. In conclusion, Restaurant Empire and Restaurant Empire 2 are truly .