How to Play Critter Kitchen

Introduction

Ready to get your chef hat on and cook up a storm in Bistro Bay but don’t have much of a clue where to start? There are so many pieces, options, and strategies in Critter Kitchen, making it all too easy to get a bit overwhelmed when you first open the box. Let’s get you into the chef academy for a lesson on how to play, and you’ll be whipping up five-star dishes in no time!

Objective

In Critter Kitchen, you will be earning stars as points at a few different main stages of the game: putting together challenge meals at the end of rounds three and six; putting your best ingredients forward at the end of the game for your critic meal; fulfilling rumour bonuses; and plenty more. Whoever has the most stars after counting up at the end wins! It’s important to remember this, as it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of all the numbers and pieces that this game presents you with – don’t take your eyes off the prize!

Setup

First things first, let’s get the foundations in place for these restaurants. There is a shared game area for all players and individual ones for each player. The shared area should look as follows (this example is for two players):

What you’ll need to do:

• Lay out the main shared board (the Waterfront) in the middle
• Place the locations along the bottom of the board in their set order:

1. Soup truck
2.  Garden top shop,
3. Desert vendor,
4. Water market (3+ players),
5. Air docks (4+ players)
6. Lantern lane (5 players)
7. Midnight merchant (use the side marked “2” if there are only 2 players, or the other side if 3+ players)
8. Chef academy.

• Place a bisque token on the matching spot on the soup truck location, and a pile of soup token on the designated area on the same location.
• Shuffle the blue-backed zouz-chef cards and randomly place one on the card slot of the chef academy location, then find the matching zouz-chef token to go alongside it on the location.
• Shuffle the seven white-backed challenge meal cards and randomly lay six of them facedown on the six grey slots along the top of the board.
• Shuffle the maroon-backed critic cards and randomly lay one of them faceup on the maroon slot along the top of the board (though the Mouse is generally recommended for your first game, if you just want to use that one).
• For the black-backed rumour cards, first, decide if you want to include advanced rumours or not (marked by the waiter in the art carrying an orange tea towel instead of white). If not, put them back in the box. Shuffle the rumour cards and randomly lay three of them facedown on the black slots along the top of the board.
• Place the following tokens on the board:
• The round tracker (the one with the trolley) on the round one slot along the bottom of the board,
• The hold token (that looks like a plate with a knife and fork) on the round three slot,
• The circular all spice token (with the funky blue chilli) on the round seven slot,
• A chef hat token in each player’s chosen colour on the “first pick” arrow, randomising the order the tokens are in.
• Place all the oblong-shaped tokens into the token bag and mix them up.
• Lay the star tokens in a pile near the play area.
• Allocate the Maitre D’ card to one of the players – they will be responsible for making sure each new round starts and ends correctly, with the instructions on their card.
  The individual setup will look like this:

What you’ll need to do once each player has chosen their coloured pieces:

• Place your kitchen board and restaurant shield in front of you.
• Place your rectangular critic plate, three circular challenge plates, and one soup token behind your shield.
• Place your mouse, lizard, and boar chef on their corresponding slots along the top of your kitchen board.
• Have your location cards to hand – you will need to remove cards for any locations that are not in your shared setup (so, if you’re playing with fewer than five players).

Optionally, you may wish to use Restaurateurs. These are optional additional rules, whereby each player is dealt two dark-blue backed Restaurateur cards, and chooses to keep one and display it next to their kitchen board. Players will be awarded the number of stars on their Restaurateur card during final scoring and provide a unique ability that the player can use at an appropriate time during the game.

Round Phases

Each round, you’re all going to be sending your chefs out to collect ingredients, spices, and more goodies! Here’s how it goes down:

Round setup

Following the steps on the Maitre D’ card, reveal a new challenge meal card (if it’s the start of round three or six, place the hold token on the third ingredient), restock bisque at the Soup Truck, restock items at all location except for the Midnight merchant, and reveal a new zouz-chef at the Chef academy (if it’s round seven, use the round “all spice” token instead of a zouz-chef).

Allocating chefs

Each player will now decide where they want their three (or four, if they have a zouz-chef) chefs to collect ingredients. Place location cards facedown next to each of your chefs (meaning you can’t have more than one chef at any location). Once all players have decided, all players will turn these cards over and place their chefs on their designated locations (make sure to match whether its a mouse, lizard, or boar chef on the location tile!)

Resolve each location

Starting left and going right, each location will then get resolved and ingredients and goodies collected. This is where the size of the chef is important: mouse chefs go first on their location (represented by their one bag icon on each player’s kitchen board), but can only carry one item back to you; lizards go second and can carry two items (two bag icons); and boars are slowest but can carry three items (three bag icons). Zouz-chefs’ speed and carry capacity is represented by the bag icon(s) on their cards.

The Soup truck is the first location. Sometimes there will be leftover ingredients in later rounds that players can choose to take, but usually, the bisque goes to the first player, then each chef fills the rest of their capacity with soup tokens.

The regular locations are each next, with chefs picking up their items as usual. 
For the Midnight merchant, you won’t know what you’re getting until you get to it. Once you have resolved all locations up to the Midnight merchant, you can now add tokens from the token bag to it and then resolve as normal.

Similar to the Soup truck, the Chef academy will sometimes contain leftover ingredients, but usually the zous-chef is what people who send chefs there are vying for. Zouz-chefs will also have additional effects to play out during the round they are in.
If at any point a location runs out of resources, any remaining chefs there will receive one soup token as consolation.

Any ties in the running order are broken by the order on the “first pick” arrow (in right to left order). The tied chefs then alternate taking one item at a time in that order until their chef reaches carry capacity, or the location runs out of items. Once they’ve taken items, if the first tied chef to pick was first on the location to pick at all (no other smaller chefs came before), they move their hat to the left end of the “first pick” arrow and are now at the back of the queue.

Players place their ingredients, spices, and soups behind their restaurant shield. Rumour tokens obtained go on the corresponding spot on the kitchen board to help keep track of who knows which rumours (if you have a * wild rumour token, it can be used on any of the rumour slots and stays there). Rumour cards will give you a heads up about how scores will be modified at the end of the game so you can strategise and prepare! If you obtained any rumour tokens, you can now view these at any time during the rest of the game. If all players have access to one of the rumours, it can be turned faceup, as it is no longer secret.

End of round

Here are the steps to end a round:

• Place any leftover tokens from the Soup truck back into the token bag.
• Move any leftover tokens from the Chef academy to the Soup truck.
• Move any leftover tokens from the regular and Midnight merchant locations to the Chef academy.
• Put the zouz-chef back into the game box if it wasn’t taken. If a player has just used a zouz-chef, this will also go back in the box, as zous-chefs are only used for the round after the one in which they are picked.
• Players take their location cards back.
• Prepare challenge meals (if it is the end of rounds three or six).
• Move the round tracker token on by one round.

Challenge Meals

At the end of round three and six, you will have a chance to win a few star points using the ingredients, spices, and soups collected so far! (Remember – eyes on the prize!) Here’s how it goes down:

Prepare meals

Each challenge meal will correspond to the ingredients on each of the challenge cards turned over so far (so cards one to three for the first set of challenge meals, then four to six for the second set). Each player may prepare one of each possible challenge meal by placing tokens on their challenge meal plates behind their shield. Each meal must consist of at least one of each ingredient, but can be several. Spices can be paired with only one corresponding ingredient token each to double its value. Soup or bisque can be used as a substitute for any ingredient (but not all of them! There must be at least one proper ingredient in each meal.) You can add as much soup or bisque in addition to any meal to increase its point value.

Present and score meals

Once all players have prepared, they will all show their meals to everyone else and take the corresponding number of stars for each dish as shown on the Waterfront board (one star for 6 or more points; two for 12 or more points, and four for 21 or more points). Ingredients and spices are then put back into the token bag, and soup and bisque is returned behind the players shield.

Refrigerate

At this stage, players will have to discard excess ingredients and keep the rest “refrigerated” on their critic plate to carry through to the next set of rounds. At the end of round three’s challenge meals, players can keep up to five tokens on their critic plate, and up to ten items and the end of round six’s challenge meals. Anything above this is put back into the token bag. If it is the end of round three’s challenge meals, don’t forget to now move the hold token onto the round six spot on the Waterfront board to be used later.

The Critic Meal

The biggest course of them all awaits! At the end of the seventh round, all players will need to prepare a meal for the critic and then tally up scores across several categories. The Waterfront board shows the order of events for rounding up your game.

Firstly, all players prepare the critic meal on their critic plate. Unless otherwise stated on critic cards, you may ONLY present up to one ingredient and up to one spice alongside the ingredient per meal. No lonesome spices or soup substitutions allowed either! Anything extra is put to one side and cannot be presented to the critic. Once everyone is ready, all players present their critic plate to everyone else and the scoring can begin!

Final scoring

Note that for each scoring category, where there is a winner, ties are friendly, meaning any players tied for first will both win a star for the category. Time to get down to business:

• A star is awarded to the player with the highest value of soup and bisque.
• A star is awarded to each player that has presented all seven course (types of ingredient token) on their critic plate – so no gaps!
• A star is awarded to the player with the highest value in each course (bearing spices in mind).
• Rumours are turned faceup and, if they have a black background, are scored. If they have a maroon background, they will affect the final score of the critic meal in the final step.
• Any bonus scoring is done (indicated by a star medallion symbol, usually on critic cards or restaurateurs, if you have chosen to use them).
• Players then flip their kitchen boards over and use their mouse chefs to add up the score of their critic meals (bearing in mind any rumours or critic modifications). Each scoring row is worth a number of stars. If you go above a score of 70, you continue counting from the top and add ten more stars to the number of stars for the row you finish on (for example, a score of 89 will get you a total of 13 stars).
  And then, after all the prep, and strategising, and cooking, you get to count up your stars to see who has won and has the best reputation in Bistro Bay! Good luck and bon appétit!