The Let's Play Archive

Restaurant Empire 2

by Enchanted Hat

Part 8: A DIFFERENT castle?

Episode 8: A DIFFERENT castle?



That is out of the question!

Why? What's the problem now?

Look, I DON'T LIKE IT! I'm not signing up for something that I don't like. Period!

So, just like that huh? You're going to just put your foot down?!

Yes. I'm putting up the money, I have final say. You'll have your say once it's your money that's on the line.

I can't believe… Tell me you did not just say that?!

In case you haven't noticed, my coffee shops are almost earning as much as your high and mighty restaurants… Now you tell me who's giving what in this relationship…



… if I didn't support you in the first place…

Alright, ALRIGHT! Do whatever you want… I'm tired of this constant arguing. If you want it to happen, then do it. I'm not going to stop you… *whispering to himself* God knows you'll just nag me to death anyway.



So guys, did you get the chance to look over the designs I left here? What do you guys think of my proposal, neat huh?



We love it. We think it's fantastic actually. Right honey?

Riiight…

So you guys are up for it?

Oh yeah definitely… In fact, I think this is going to be our most unique establishment yet!!



Well, that was uncomfortable. What's worse is that Armand didn't stand his ground, so now we have a patisserie castle!



Wait a second. This isn't I Heart Cake.

So Jules and Delia didn't convince Armand to refurbish our existing patisserie, they made him build a new ghastly castle for a second patisserie. I now have to use the profits from Treize à Table to keep TWO patisseries afloat .

Fuck this, I'm going to do a TV show instead.



Well, I'm off… Don't wait up for me Del… I'll probably be home late.

… fine whatever…

I'm tired of your constant irritating attitude. God knows I didn't sign up for this when we got married.

… whatever, just go…

It's pretty clear where your priorities are anyway…

I'm sorry, what did you say?! You of all people should understand how important this is to us… how important this is to me! If you can't see that then…

Please Armand! I'm tired of this and I'm sick of your excuses… You know what I see? Nothing. NOTHING Armand! That's what I see in this house. You spend all your time in that TV show of yours; you practically see stars in your eyes!

How long have you been in this house the last few weeks, huh? How many? I'll tell you how many: eight days. You know how I know that? BECAUSE I'M HERE!

If you care so much about that show of yours maybe you should just…

I'm… going.

Just go… just go…



You don't look so well today…

It's a routine, or don't you know it?

Chin up Armand. You're in Hollywood. Just remember how many people would love to be in your shoes right now.

You've been on a roll lately, especially when Tim guested here last time. Keep your eyes on the prize and remember why you're here. Just a little more Armand and you'll be a certified star.

Yeah George… I'll see ya.

Break a leg son!



You may have noticed that for the last few episodes, we've been very much focused on main courses as our theme. Well that certainly does not mean that I prefer the main course above all the others;

in fact, the smaller dishes have a very special place in my heart as well as my appetite. I've been receiving a boatload of mail lately asking me to do a show focusing on appetizers.

Well, for the viewers who wrote in, you guys are in luck. Not only are we focusing on appetizers today, but I've invited one of the most well-known chefs in the world to join us in our appetizer-a-thon. Please welcome, my good friend and colleague, Chef Thierry Perregaux!

Today, Thierry and I will each make our own appetizers. Mind you this is not a competition. God knows I won't be able to compete with someone as talented as him…

Hahaha… don't listen to him everyone. Mr. Armand Lebouf is more of an expert in appetizers than he is letting on. Much of what I know now actually comes from him so…

I will be introducing my very own Langoustines with Asparagus. The trick with this dish is in the ingredients. With a dash of Parmesan cheese and…



Hey, Thierry from the first game is back! Good to see him and his ridiculous moustache again. As I recall, I stuck him in our French restaurant in LA, so it even makes sense for him to be around.



And now I shall reveal my own little appetizer secret. My dish is the Duck's Liver Tart. In this one, my secret is to use high-quality cognac to strengthen the flavour of the…



I like how the writers cut Thierry and Armand off while they're describing the cooking process. It's like they're acknowledging that they really don’t know anything about cooking and all their recipes are preposterous.



I had a strange glitch during this minigame. Game, I know you're very impressed that I got a COMBO, but if you make the writing that big I can't actually see the game board.



We've once again come to the end of our show. Again I'd like to thank everyone for watching and continuing to support us. I'd also like to thank the people behind the scenes,

from the producers to the people at wardrobe, that make a show like this possible. And of course, Chef Thierry Perregaux for sharing his time and recipe with us.

Always a pleasure Chef Armand!

Just remember that whenever you're in the kitchen, a dash of creativity and a pinch of variety is the wonderful blend to a satisfied stomach! From all of us here: good night everyone!!



All right, before I deal with Jules' new castle, let's take a look at the redecorated I Heart Cake!



Yeesh! Those flan tables do not go very well with the spiral nightmare background! I had a bunch of different requests for large tables, so I tried to accommodate all of them, which just made things way worse. This is ghastly.



Because the flan tables and benches take up so much space, I've moved the whole operation to the second floor.



I needed an excuse to get out of the patisserie, so here are the results of our recipe research! This is the best American dessert that we can research, the almond waffles. I don't really understand how this recipe works? However, it's very high quality (71% is excellent), and we can serve it in both our French restaurant and our patisseries! I won't serve it at Treize à Table because we already have an amazing French dessert, but it'll be great for Jules' patisseries.



This is the ultimate tea that we can research. Surprisingly, it's not a nice Earl Grey, but rather an "iced mint-green tea". 77% quality is incredible, and naturally I'll be serving this in all of our cafés. Even our kopi luwak-boosted coffees aren't that good.



This is our ultimate mixed drink. I'm very sceptical of this ingredient list.



This is our ultimate coffee shop food recipe. Isn't this what Ozkan was cooking which Armand told him was fucking awful? Not that I mind - look at the gross margin on this bad boy! We'll be earning $13.39 per serving, making it one of our most profitable coffee shop recipes in addition to being one of the highest quality recipes.

Our research into French desserts hasn't finished yet, but we should see the results of that later this mission.

Now that we've finished our research into our original research topics, it'd be a good idea to start researching something new. Now, I have this strange feeling that I'll really, really want to fully research all of the patisserie recipe types before reaching the endgame unless I want to have a bad time. So let's put all the money into patisserie recipe research!



Speaking of patisserie recipes, someone sells me this recipe. Almond tart is right, it's literally just almond, flour and sugar. I don't think this tart is cooked, I think it's forged like a bar of steel.

All right, I've put it off for long enough. Let's go to the patisserie castle.



This is the new patisserie, Amo La Torta. According to Google Translate, that means "I Love the Cake". Instead of picking a décor style, I've just used every kind of table available to us to show them all off. I kept the default wallpaper, but I switched to the pepperoni carpet for obvious reasons.



Promisingly, it seems Amo La Torta is more popular than the old patisserie, so it shouldn't be quite as painful to get the place operational. Since this patisserie is doing better than the old one, I'm going to switch Jules to this restaurant to give her more cooking experience.



I briefly pop back to Treize à Table where a customer sells me the recipe for tuna gazpacho, which is an incredible French appetizer. It's a bit unfortunate that gazpacho isn't classed as a soup, as we also need good soup recipes, but I'm definitely not complaining about picking up such a good recipe.



Once I go back to Amo La Torta, I'm immediately sold an incredibly poor recipe. What is this game's problem with the Delecoeurs, seriously?



While checking up on I Heart Cake, I notice that nearly all of our guests have that little green nauseous indicator over their heads. Looks like your plan to disgust them with the décor worked perfectly!



This is a little concerning. In order to pass this mission, Amo La Torta needs to achieve a monthly profit of $18,000. I'm not surprised that I didn't get it this month because I spend $50,000 a month on advertising, but even if we exclude that, Amo La Torta would have made a loss of $10,683 this month. Why is it doing so poorly?



While I look into that, here are our first researched patisserie recipes! Patisseries have five recipe categories:

- Cakes, pies & tarts
- Cookies & pastries
- Ice cream & soberts
- Pudding & gelatin dessert
- Beverages

The above is the first cookies & pastries recipe. Not only is it a terrible recipe, but it's cooked in the special café blender which means it'll cook really slowly. Awful through and through.



This is the ice cream & soberts recipe. They actually spelled "sorbet" properly in this recipe, and the picture looks pretty cool! I don't know why this is rated so poorly. I'd try it.



Our pudding & gelatin dessert. This is just a really strange, deconstructed latte.

We started with one recipe from the beverages category already researched, so we don't actually have anything new from beverage research yet. We do research a cakes, pies & tarts recipe, but that recipe is temporarily classified .

Suffice to say that I won't be using any of these researched recipes, but eventually the research should pay off with new ultimate recipes.



This month turns out far better for Amo La Torta. Subtracting the advertising spend, it made a profit of around $14,000, which is almost enough to reach our very low profit target!

As for why the first month went so poorly, I may have added a couple of recipes to the menu which Jules was unable to cook because I didn't buy her the necessary cooking equipment. Sorry, Jules!



We finally get the ultimate French dessert, nougat parfait with honey! I never managed to buy this recipe in Restaurant Empire 1, which is unfortunate, because I promised we'd get an awesome strawberry-based dessert. But at least we have it now! It has 1% less quality rating than our fruit gratin, but it's really fast to make and has a better base profit margin. I'll definitely add it to the menu at Treize à Table. What's more important is that this can be served at patisseries! Since most of our current patisserie recipes are awful, this is a godsend.



I've been meeting a number of furniture wholesalers during this mission, which unlocks new décor options. While playing through this month, I notice that one of the new wholesalers lets me buy pineapple lamps! I do.



A few months later we just barely meet the mission objectives. We win!

Now, what are we going to do with this new patisserie?




These are the wall, floor and table options.




These are the wall- and floor-mounted decorations.

Thread poll: what décor should we have in Amo La Torta?

Vote on wall, floor and table design. For example, to vote for wall type C, floor type D and table type B, vote "CDB". The winning combination will be whatever has the most votes when I play the next mission. Also, let me know if you want me to add any of the floor or wall decorations.