Part 7: No items, Final Destination, soups only

Episode 6: No items, Final Destination, soups only



Hello, Don. How are you?

Good, Armand. You know, I've been thinking, and I want to see OmniFood topple as much as you want to win the cooking crown.

I guess you could say that.

You know, we have to up the ante and pick up the pace. Or you'll always make peanuts.

I want you to turn the new restaurant into a financial success. Actually, I want to see all your restaurants become financial success stories! Let's see if between your Treize à Table and La Cosa Nostra you don't make some 50 grand per month for starters.

That should be okay. $50,000 per month of revenue.

That's profit, not revenue, Armand.

And what do I get out of all this?

Well, you get the restaurant to make that kind of money, and we can explore more possibilities for your expansion. Work up my confidence in you, Armand, and we both will reap the rewards!

I'll get going. $50,000 is a lot of money to make in a month for two tiny restaurants.

Don't worry about the amount. Think of what $50,000 in profits will do for our bottom line!


$50,000? Sounds easy enough, but just in case, let's see if Uncle Michel has any advice for us (or more usefully, any more ridiculously good recipes).



Hi, Armand! How's everything going with the Don?

Well, actually, that's what I came to talk to you about.

Why, what's the matter?

I need to diversify my repertoire of cooking skills.

You know, no man is an island. You need to round up better staff so that everyone draws from each other's experience. I'll tell you what: you go and look up these chefs. One's the son of a good friend of mine. They might help you out.

YOU NOW HAVE THE LOCATION OF THIERRY AND PIERRE.

They're at this restaurant named *La lune rouge*.

I just cannot improve my recipes. I need to find better ingredients!

Try out this place. It's the Red Apple. They have some nice ingredients there. Nothing exceptional, but at least better than your average grocery store.

YOU NOW HAVE THE LOCATION OF THE RED APPLE GROCERY STORE.

Well, uncle, my business strategies are not working this time around. What now?

How about the French Regionals? Have you participated yet? Maybe if you win this one as well, you'll be able to attract sufficient customers to turn around your restaurant's fortune.

THE FRENCH REGIONALS ARE ON! MAYBE YOU SHOULD PARTICIPATE!

Thanks, uncle. I'll be going now!

Good luck, Armand.



Wow, Michel gave us a lot of leads! Before I check those out, I want to return to La Cosa Nostra, which has been redecorated with the help of the thread.



In line with the transformation of the restaurant into a place for mafia wetwork, the restaurant has been given a trendy all-red makeover based on the BBA style, in the hopes that the décor will help hide any unfortunate stains. I can't think of any mob-related justification for the horses, except that they're pretty cool. It wasn't possible to place them next to the chairs, so instead the horses were given their own third seat so they can be guests of honour at every table.



As for this table… you don't ask about this table.



I neglected to show off our new chef last time. This is Mario Corleone, our only chef at La Cosa Nostra. He's got pretty low cooking skills, even worse than Armand, but he's all we have at the moment, and besides, I'm not suicidal enough to try to sack a Corleone in his own murder restaurant. Fortunately, Uncle Michel mentioned two new chefs we might be able to recruit. Let's go to their restaurant and see if we can't "persuade them" to come work for us.



Wow, that's a moustache.



Hi, what can I do for you?

Hi. My name is Armand and my uncle Michel said that I look up two chefs named Thierry and Pierre. Do you know who they are?

Why, that's us! Yes, I know your uncle. I worked with him before, over at Treize à Table before he closed the restaurant down, when I still had a real job!

Thierry, what's wrong with your current job?

Ah, jobs – you know how it is… I cannot express myself fully here. This low-budget restaurant has me stuck making second-grade recipes.

Thierry, why don't you come work in my restaurant group!

Your offer is tempting, but I need more reassurance. My current boss gave me the same spiel, and look at me now – stuck in a rut!

How's about a salary raise?

How much are we talking about?

I'll raise your salary by $200!

Nah. I don't think it's worth the hassle.

I'll double your salary!

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Probably not. Actually, no.

I'll triple your salary! C'mon, it's a great deal!

Sure! Now that's some good money to go by! Sure, I'll take you up on your offer immediately! Where do you want me to report for duty?

You're quite good with Italian as well – why don't you give La Cosa Nostra a try?

Why not? I can hone up my Italian skills in an authentic environment!

THIERRY JOINS LA COSA NOSTRA WITH A $2400 SALARY.

Who's the gentleman beside you?

Ah, yes. Let me introduce Pierre to you. Pierre, this is Armand.

Hi, Armand, nice to meet you.

So Pierre, how's YOUR job treating you?

I cannot live up to my potential in this low-budget restaurant. What's more, I am a pain for my boss. I'm too inefficient, not cost-effective. The list goes on and on. It really makes me feel worthless.

Too inefficient?

He says I take too long to prepare the food. But, how can you rush art? And all my recipes, he says, are too expensive to make – that the fresh produce elevates the price. What does he expect? Good food requires good ingredients!

Come work with me! Come on, what do you have to lose?

I never thought of changing jobs… Maybe you're right. I'm just in the wrong place.!

So? What do you say?

Sure! Why not? I'll take the chance. Anything but this dump!

PIERRE JOINS TREIZE À TABLE FOR $1800 A MONTH.

Well, goodbye now, I'll be seeing you soon!

Goodbye, Armand. Seen you soon… [sic]

Goodbye, it was nice to meet you. We will report to duty right away!


Armand: master negotiator. Still, we desperately need more chefs, so it doesn't really matter that Armand threw money at them. Also, if $2,400 per month is triple Thierry's old salary, he was making $800 a month. Is that even legal in Paris? I'm guessing not.

Also, I was looking desperately for an option to leave the conversation after Pierre started talking about his unprofitable, slow-to-cook recipes, but unfortunately you're forced to hire both of them. Hopefully Armand can keep him from causing too much trouble.



Now that we have twice as many chefs, I've upped the number of tables at Treize à Table to 17, which was as many as I could fit on the second floor while still making it relatively navigable for the servers.

What else did Uncle Michel tell us to do? Well, he mentioned a store that might be able to sell us some better ingredients. Let's go to Red Apple Groceries and see what they have.



Hi, and welcome to the Red Apple.


Uh oh.



Hi. My uncle told me to come by here to source some ingredients.

And your uncle is?

Michel LeBoeuf.

Michel LeBoeuf. Ah, Michel! He retired a while back. So you're running the restaurant now? It's nice to know that the Cooking Competition is drawing fresh blood into the arena. It's good for us spectators.

So about the ingredients…

Ah, yes.

This looks more like a common grocery store. Uncle told me you carried fresh ingredients!

That was a few years ago, when your uncle still ran the restaurant and bought here. He was basically the cash cow. With the restaurant gone, the former owner left to pursue his fortune elsewhere. He sold this store to me.

Since your uncle left, the clientele has changed to canned goods. I mainly sell to families around the area. So, I changed it to a grocery. Lots of canned goods. Good ones, though.

Don't you have any good ingredients, like the ones you sold to my uncle before?

You know, I do, but it's a personal stash I keep to make some of my own recipes from back home in Grozny. My babushka sends it to me.

What's a babushka?

That's Russian. It means my wife.

What kind of ingredients?

Baltic sea fishing. Northeast Atlantic salmon and spider crab. But again, these are for personal use. However, if you really want to get your hands on these ingredients, I can sell them to you, but at a price.

What kind of money are we talking about?

I'd say about $50 per salmon and $25 per pound of crab.

Hey, isn't that a bit expensive?

Quality comes at a price. Besides, we from the former Soviet bloc love this exploitative method of supply and demand that you call the capitalist system!

So, what will it be? Do you want some or not?

Alright, I'm interested. Can I buy some?

Nope. Not yet. I'm still waiting for my next shipment. I'll let you know when the shipment arrives – I'll save some salmon and crab for you.

DMITRI MAKES A NOTE TO RESERVE SOME NORTH ATLANTIC DELICACIES FOR YOU THE NEXT TIME HE RECEIVES A SHIPMENT.

I can tell her to send some now, but it will take a few months before the goods clear customs. Until then, why don't you try some of my other goods?

What wares does this purveyor of fine canned goods carry?

Well, let me show you.



Some customers (and our friend Dmitri here) will sell you limited amounts of special ingredients, instead of just making them available as a normal wholesaler. This is useless for normal menus because volumes are too low, but you can use these limited ingredients for cooking competitions. This is pretty low quality stuff, but I buy a bit of everything just in case.

Also I'm not even going to comment on him saying that his babushka is his wife.

OK, that's all. I'll be back later for more goods.

It was nice doing business with you too, capitalist!



All that's left now is the cooking contest! But here the game throws you a mean curveball. This is a SOUPS ONLY contest. What's more, it has two rounds: in round one, any French soup will do, and in round two, only the pea soup with crème fraîche specifically will be permitted. This is a recipe you don't even have until you recruit Thierry and Pierre, which guarantees that Armand's cooking skill with that recipe will be really low.

I could just send Pierre or Thierry to try to win the contest instead, but Armand could use some practice, so I add the pea soup to the menu at Treize à Table and tell the game that only Armand is allowed to cook it. That way, his recipe skill should go up quickly, and since we have six months to finish this mission, we have plenty of time for Armand to prepare.



Although we can't win the mission before we win the cooking contest, I wanted to show that now that we have two chefs, even our tiny restaurant Treize à Table is bringing in nearly $80,000 in profit on its own. At this point, the limiting factor is customers, since we're now serving absolutely everyone who comes into the restaurant.



After a few months, I feel confident entering Armand into he contest. There was a slight problem with my plan: people really weren't that into the pea soup, even when it was the only soup on the menu! Nevertheless, I managed to up Armand's cooking skill to 55%, which isn't great, but is respectable. For the first round, we'll be cooking the cream of asparagus soup, one of our starting soups which Armand has 100% skill at cooking.



We easily win round one with the cream of asparagus soup. Hopefully Armand's early lead will be enough to win the contest even if he isn't that skilled at making the pea soup.



It is. Armand also won round two, even though it was much closer.



We win a new appetizer! It's not very good. 42% quality is terrible, and its gross profit of $6.69 is just appalling. Bad recipe.



Just like last time, there's an optional follow-up contest. This time round 1 is any French main course (which we should dominate with our incredible mixed casserole) and round two is eggplant, zucchini, red pepper and parmesan torte, which Armand cooks with 98% cooking skill. This should be easy.



To spice it up a bit, I have Armand enter the first round with a new recipe we got from Pierre, the beef daube, instead of the usual mixed casserole. This is a good recipe with really high quality and a great profit margin that also cooks quickly (the cooking time indicator showing five clocks is lying to us). If we win the contest with the beef daube, it'll become an award-winning recipe, and guests will be more interested in ordering it.



We win it, no problem.



We win this recipe, the artichoke crepes with langoustines. This is an appetizer with a really high quality rating, much higher than anything else we have at Treize à Table, which will be very useful if we get any cooking contests where we have to cook French appetizers. The profit margin isn't great, but we can just reduce the quality of the ingredients for the regular plebs at our restaurants, then increase the quality when we take it to the cooking contest. Definitely a good recipe.



Our final P&L for both restaurants. You want $50,000 profit, Don Corleone? Try $200,000.



We crushed this mission! Is there anything that can stand against our restaurants and our insatiable greed?

We've got a bunch of new recipes, and I haven't yet consulted the thread about what recipes to use for La Cosa Nostra, so I have listed every Italian recipe available to us below. As usual, the recipes are divided into good recipes, mediocre recipes and disastrous recipes that will drag down our quality or our profitability. I currently have a pretty sparse, basic menu at La Cosa Nostra, so let me know if you want me to put any of the recipes below on the menu, and I'll add them!

Good recipes
Cold spaghetti salad (appetizer)
Prawns with fried snow peas (appetizer)
Cream of red bell pepper soup (soup)
Eggplant, zucchini, red pepper and parmesan torte (main)
Mixed casserole of pork (main)
Guilt free cappuccino sundaes (dessert)

Mediocre recipes
Baked eggs with cheese (breakfast)
Cream drop biscuits (breakfast)
Green pea ravioli with lemon broth (appetizer)
Spicy marinated mozzarella with oregano and capers (appetizer)
Pasta vegetable chowder (soup)
Cream of asparagus soup (soup)
Gourmet pizza (main)
Roasted vegetable pizza (main)
Chicken vesuvio (main)
Chives omelet with bacon (main)
Fried Italian ravioli (main)
Meringue with forest fruits (dessert)
Strawberries jubilee (dessert)
Berries and cream pasta stack (dessert)

Bad recipes
Cheese and sun-dried tomato tartines (appetizer)
Italian celery salad (appetizer)
Steamed mussels (main)
Stuffed peppers (main)
Baked creamy cheesy pasta (main)
Carbonara (main)
Duckling with orange and coriander sauce (main)

You'll notice that a number of these recipes are the same as the recipes at Treize à Table. Every recipe has an icon showing one or more national flags. This icon shows what cuisines the recipe can reasonably pass as. For example, the artichoke crepes with langoustines recipe above shows a French flag and a US flag. That means that you can serve the recipe in a French restaurant and an American restaurant, but not in an Italian restaurant, and that it will count as French or American for the purposes of a cooking contest.