Part 17: Imagine a boot stamping on a floppy chef's hat forever
Episode 16: Imagine a boot stamping on a floppy chef's hat forever
Hi, uncle. I need some advice from the voice of experience. You see, I heard that the Master Series is accepting chef registrations, and I would like to enter…
The Masters! Now, that's a bold move, but I'm not even sure they'd let you enter! Why can't I enter the Masters? I believe that you need to win all the Nationals, Armand. That means the Italian, French and American events. You should tackle these contests first if you really want to take a crack at the Masters.YOU HAVE TO WIN ALL THE NATIONAL EVENTS BEFORE YOU CAN ENTER THE MASTER SERIES.
But I am already a Master French chef! You have trained with a French Grand Master. But you will still have to prove your capability with other cuisines in front of the judges. And that, my dear Armand, you must do by winning all the nationals first. It's the rules of the competition, Armand! How can I prepare for the Masters? At this stage of your career, I think you probably know as much as I do. Use your instinct, faith and your heart when cooking, Armand. Everything else will fall in place! Thanks, uncle. I guess I'm on my own on this one… Don't worry, Armand. You have already proven that you can be among the very best chefs. The rest depends on your determination and resolve. I know you will succeed! Well, I'll be going now! Good luck Armand!
This mission is all cooking contests, all the time! We have to win the French, Italian and American national cooking contests in order to qualify for the master contest, then beat that as well. I hope you're good at those cooking minigames, because I'm definitely not!
But first, let's check out the new interior of the Funky Elvis (or "HUSiC CLUG" as it says there on the pediment)!
WHAT HAVE WE WROUGHT!
The walls are generally covered with giant TV screens and electric guitars, but I wanted to preserve a stretch of wall here in the middle of the restaurant in order to convey just how fucking vile this wallpaper is. It looks like I royally screwed up editing a texture, but this is what it's supposed to look like. There was pretty broad consensus in the thread to go for the BCB décor style, because evidently you guys are trying to kill me.
In addition to the regular tables, we have a single table for display only in this TV dungeon surrounded by an army of (allegedly) Elvises. The table itself features Zagglezig's kickass Funky Elvis logo.
A couple of guests come in for lunch. The green face icon above Eliza Anderson indicates that she is sickened, and I can understand why.
A guest at the Treize à Table wants a word, and since it's an excuse to get out of this fucking restaurant, I jump at the opportunity. But holy shit, we have a new record: a $102,060 recipe. What could that even be?
Oh, fries. What does he think this is, a diner! And it's a breakfast dish too, so despite its amazing quality rating, this is never going to be very useful to us. At least it has an impressive profit margin of $2.61 - we'll only have to sell 39,104 plates of this in order to recover the cost of the recipe! That said, it is a lot better than all our other breakfast dishes, so I've added it to all the restaurant menus. A good recipe.
I buy another recipe at the Gentille Alouette. At least this one was only about $19,000. Good profit margin, but the quality is so low that I'll never be using this (unless one of you guys want me to add it, of course!) Bad recipe
Since the recipe was bad, I've asked head chef Renato "The Cleaver" Corleone to "deal" with this customer.
All right, enough of that. It's time to steamroll the cooking nationals! We've already beaten the French nationals, so we have to beat the American and Italian nationals, then win the master contest in Paris. First up is the American contest. American appetizer, dessert and some recipe I don't recognise. I'm hoping that I can win this just off the strength of the first two rounds so the last recipe won't matter.
Let's be cute and make Delia the supporting chef.
A NEW cooking minigame?! I'm not comfortable with this!!!
Phew. One down, two to go!
Winning the contest earns me this recipe for Santa Fe meat loaf. It's an amazing recipe, even though it's clearly a sub sandwich with some kind of bean soup. A good recipe
Rome, second contest! Italian mains and desserts followed by smoked salmon pizza. Is putting smoked salmon on pizza even legal in Italy?
As an olive branch to the Corleones, I ask Mario to help us. In past cooking contests, Mario has been even more dominant than Armand, so having the Corleones on our side should be invaluable (also, I'm not sure any of the other contestants would dare to try to beat him).
Second one down! Armand cooked in the third round because he had Dmitri's special super salmon, but he still did pretty poorly.
We won the recipe for tiramisu from the Italian nationals. What kind of madman adds tiramisu to the game, then says to himself, "yes, obviously tiramisu should be one of the lowest-rated recipes in this game, tiramisu is garbage"? He must have meant to write 99%, but his finger slipped all the way to the opposite side of his keyboard. Unfortunately, that means that this is a bad recipe.
Time for the global cooking masters! All cuisines, all recipes, appetizers, soups, mains and desserts! Let's go!
Armand, Delia and Mario – the cooking juggernaut.
Using Armand's special ingredients, the stuffed spider crab is still our best appetizer, with a recipe quality of 90%.
Armand's cooking experience and my sick minigame skills push that up to 99%. The French Confection got nothing on us.
Our fisherman's soup is by far the best soup in our repertoire. Mario is the only one in the party who knows how to cook it, so he's up now.
Like taking candy from a baby. Well, soup. And we're not stealing it, we're actually making the soup and giving it to the baby. And by "baby" I mean the judges. I'm gonna stop typing.
Round three: crab cakes! Since it's a contest, I'm going to lay off the crob and use some of Dmitri's super crabs.
This isn't a contest, it's a massacre!
For the final round, let's return to our roots.
We are the cooking masters!
We win the recipe for fillet of beef with foie gras and truffles! I believe this recipe is called tournedos Rossini, and it's delicious and looks nothing like that in reality. It's also got a really high quality rating and great profitability. A good recipe!
Let's celebrate our victory by spicing up the exterior of the Funky Elvis just a little bit. Before…
…and AFTER! Now you know EXACTLY what you're in for when you enter this restaurant.
I beat the Italian and American contests again for more recipes. Finally, after clawing his way through the cooking ladder, beating every national cooking contest and conquering the cooking masters tournament, Armand finally knows how to fry an egg. Good recipe
I also win this. I'm sorry, game, but this recipe is just disgusting: $0.36 gross margin? Get this out of my restaurant and never come back!
While I wait for the end of the month, I take a moment to appreciate the new exterior. Just look at this. I could add NOTHING to this.
Oh, and someone sells me another recipe. Good profit margin, quality isn't too bad. It's a mediocre recipe, really.
Victory upon victory! At this point, can ANYTHING stand against us? Next mission, we'll be visiting old friends to build a grand coalition against the wicked OmniFood!
In addition to challenging OmniFood, we will also finally be allowed to make a new restaurant of our own design instead of being handed one by the game. I'll need you guys to decide what kind of restaurant we should make!
Thread poll: building a new restaurant
We need three things to build our new restaurant:
1. A location (Paris, Rome or Los Angeles)
2. A style (French, Italian, Steakhouse, Seafood or Music)
3. A great name!
I'll be looking at the location, style and name separately, so don't worry about splitting the vote. If you vote for a seafood or music restaurant, please also state whether the restaurant should cook French, Italian or American food.