Part 16: A restaurant for a king
Episode 15: A restaurant for a king
Delia! Aren't you excited? Armand is coming back any minute now!
How time flies! I wonder what Armand has learned all this while… And you see, that wasn't so bad, was it? What do you mean? You fared stupendously in maintaining Armand's restaurants – they are still cooking as much as ever! Even Armand will feel a bit envious at your entrepreneurial skills once he finds out!Michel and Delia managed to implement outrageously profitable set menus and not paying your employees while Armand was away. It's hard to believe, but they might actually be even MORE ruthless than Armand is.
Well, don't just stand there! How about a hug? ARMAND! ARMAND! Delia! Uncle! Boy, how I missed you all! Michel, thanks for helping Delia out in my absence. Think nothing of it, Armand. We are family, and that's the least I can do to help. And Delia. Thank you so much for overlooking my restaurants. I knew you had it in you! Oh, Armand! I must thank YOU for the opportunity you have given me, and the confidence you have inspired in me! Do you want to introduce us to this new chef? Yes, Armand! Why don't you show some manners? Oh, sorry… Let me introduce you to this young phenom that I encountered during my trip… Meet Carlo. Carlo? Carlo! Come over here! Don't be shy! You'll have to excuse Carlo here. He's a great chef, but he's also quite timid…
Bon Giorno, Signore LeBoeuf. Bon Giorno, Signorina Delia. His English is not that great, either, but the boy's got true talent. He can cook French as well as any Parisian. But not just that – he can cook Italian, American, heck, he can cook most anything! I've decided to give him a job with us. Carlo also has some bright ideas when it comes to restaurants. Really? Yes, and he mentioned to me on the trip back that we should look into diversifying our restaurants. What do you suggest, Carlo? Is good idea, I think. We open music restaurant in entertainment capital of the world. This is very good idea – many people enjoy music and entertainment. We take opportunity. Hmmm. I guess he is suggesting to open up a music restaurant in Los Angeles?A what.
Well, that's a splendid idea! Just think, Armand – music restaurants – a new concept in the food and beverage industry! And placing one in Los Angeles is almost a guaranteed success, with all their big stars and bigger budgets! What'd I tell you about the kid? He's a bright young talent. Maybe someday he will enjoy the same luck I have during my career – he's definitely got the potential. So… What has happened all this while? How are you? I couldn't be better – first my trip in Europe, and now I am back home with uncle and you! You know, after learning all I could from that fabulous master chef, I gained so much knowledge and insight into the culinary universe! Now I have much more skills to advance the business. Not only that, I toured Europe giving speeches and lectures and even found a young and talented chef that knows quite a bit of American cuisine. All in all, a great experience! So, Armand, what are you going to do, now that you are back? Well, I feel I am on a roll. I want to establish this music restaurant, and I can't think of a better way to start getting a foothold and consolidating my position in the US, and whittle away OmniFood's dominance. And I plan to have the restaurant running within a year. A bit defiant, now, aren't we? I can't help it, Delia. First, OmniFood tries to blow us out of the water. Then they bully us with their money. I want payback. And with you and Delia supporting me, I feel like I can take on the world.Armand, OmniFood has done literally nothing to us. The worst thing they've done so far is run an ad campaign, and we've been spending millions on advertising for our own restaurants.
That's a good idea. OmniFood has been hammering in some deep stakes in Los Angeles during the time you've gone. I believe they're up to no good, and are employing their usual underhanded tactics again. There's many strange happenings going on recently in the industry… Yes! The other day, while you were away, well, I hired this chef in purple clothing, and he suddenly left without a trace! You WHAT! NO! Delia, I might not have mentioned this to you, but purple uniforms are synonymous with OmniFood!Oops.
You – didn't give this chef any recipes, now, did you? Actually, I did, but how was I supposed to know that he was OmniFood? You're right. No sense flinging mud on the fan right now. Those creeps! I can't believe they have resorted to stealing our recipes in an effort to gain the upper hand! If that's the case, let's all go and take our positions – I feel a war looming on the horizon, and this is one battle that I do not plan on losing!
I guess OmniFood FINALLY did something underhanded! On the other hand, is it really underhanded if one of their chefs visits our restaurant wearing his highly distinctive OmniFood uniform, says "please could you show me all your secret recipes?", then leaves with the recipes completely legally because we can't write a proper non-disclosure agreement? That's not even cunning on their part, we're just really, really dumb.
Anyway, this is OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK
Okay, I'm going to try that one more time.
So this is our
If you're highly observant, you may already have noticed our new restaurant's name at the top of the screen. This new restaurant is the "Funky Elvis". Because "funky" is a word you want associated with the food you serve in your restaurant. Our goals are very simple: win a cooking contest and turn the Funky Elvis into a highly rated fine dining establishment. Armand's already a celebrity chef, so Richard doesn't have to bug us about that this time.
As usual, I set up a pretty basic temporary layout for the restaurant. Unfortunately, there are no ridiculous options for the tables like chairs made out of melted guitars or anything like that, so I just go with some fairly modern sets.
Since Armand is already really good at cooking French food, I decide to switch it up and put him in the Funky Elvis along with that new chef he hired. Apparently, when Armand was telling us how Carlo "can cook most anything", he must have meant "knows how to cook six Italian recipes, poorly". Still, we'll get the two of them up to speed with American cuisine soon enough. What do you even serve in a music restaurant?
Apparently, it's very similar to what you serve in a steakhouse and a seafood restaurant.
Just after I open the Funky Elvis for business, a guest at Treize à Table sells me this foie gras tart. It's very low quality, so there's no reason to ever use it. Bad recipe.
Around lunchtime we have a slight problem: the intersection of people who enjoy expensive fine dining and people who would be interested in eating at a "music restaurant" is pretty small. By half past twelve, we only have a single lunch guest. Even Armand's star power isn't helping to attract customers to our restaurant. I crank our advertising budget as high as it'll go and hope the situation improves in the coming months.
A guest sells me the recipe for something called a "garden salad". Never heard of it, but its profitability is awful. Clearly a bad recipe.
At some point during the dinner service at the Funky Elvis, we manage to fill a whole three seats!
I'm starting to think that starting a music restaurant was not the best idea we've ever had.
Okay, new plan. Rather than having two chefs wasting their time at the Funky Elvis, I transfer Armand to Wagons Ho!, which is highly successful and could actually use a third chef.
Carlo, you'd better get this place profitable, or I'm sending you on special assignment to our Italian restaurant.
Speaking of Italian, I bought a new Italian recipe, the pork roast tangerine*. The profit margin is incredible, at $20.31 with an ingredient cost of $1.69, but at this point it's just not a great idea to put these low-quality recipes on the menu. I've been cranking up the prices of our most popular dishes around the different restaurants, and I'm getting away with it because the food quality is so good. At this point in the game, this is a bad recipe.
*Does not contain tangerine.
I'm getting near the time limit, and I'm a little concerned. One of the mission goals was to get the Funky Elvis to four stars, and it's still not there yet. The main problem is the low food quality – Carlo's cooking is just awful, and we get so few guests that he isn't able to practice and become better. I'm going to switch Carlo with one of the skilled chefs from Wagons Ho! and see if we can't get to four stars. Otherwise, I'll have to use a secret weapon.
Meanwhile, we also have a cooking contest to win! This is a dessert contest. One round is for any American dessert, the second round is for blueberry muffins specifically. And who has spent the last four months making blueberry muffins non-stop?
This guuuy!
Out of contempt for the judges, Armand will be cooking our classic seafood quiche for the first round of the dessert contest.
For round two, delicious blueberry muffins.
ez
Surprisingly, we win a high-quality breakfast dish. Breakfast dishes are almost entirely pointless because you get so few breakfast guests, but thanks, I guess. Good recipe.
I go back and beat the contest a second time just to rub it in, and they give me this recipe for a disgusting-looking asparagus and cheese omelette. Bad recipe.
We reach the end of the month, and Bruce "Big Red" Allen's cooking skills really managed to pull us through, as he single-handedly pushed the restaurant's rating up from 3.5 to 4.5/5. We beat the mission!
And the Funky Elvis finally managed to make a tiny profit.
You know the drill by now: I need some décor advice! Continuing the trend of restaurants with very few but totally great decorative items, these are the only wall- and floor-mounted items available at the Funky Elvis. Beware the heavy metal guardians of the sacred television! Also there's a giant log for some reason. The TV has a resolution of - several pixels - and cycles through various high-fidelity concert pictures. Let me know what you think I should add to the restaurant!
Because the floor and wall options this time are just so extraordinary, I've made this collage showing what each option actually looks like in our restaurant. Wall option B really hurts to look at, which would probably bother our customers if we had any.
These are the table options. Option F is really bad in gameplay terms, the rest are fine.
Thread poll: what décor should we have in the Funky Elvis?
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.