First steps
A first-steps guide for your restaurant, based only on things the game really does: hiring, cooking, getting paid, decorating, visiting neighbours and saving your game.
Open the home page, press “Create my restaurant” and choose a username, a password of at least 8 characters and a character. Then press “Play”. The tutorial has you choose your character's look, take the cook's place, hire your first helper and discover the recipe menu, Friends Street and the editor.
Everything is done with the mouse: click to choose, drag to place furniture and use the wheel or trackpad to scroll lists. Esc closes windows. The game stage scales to your window, so on small screens it looks small; the “Enlarge” button makes it bigger inside the window.
The restaurant only opens with at least one cook and one waiter with energy; without them the closed sign stays up and no customers arrive. At first you are the cook. Open the Job Center (the “Hire Friends” button), hire your first helper and assign them as waiter.
At level 1 there is room for 2 employees. To have more you must level up or sack someone (Sack).
With your starting ingredients, the recipe menu leads you to learn Garden Salad, which uses Salad, Tomato, Egg. Learning it makes you level up and gives you 2,500 coins. The level 1 reward is 3,500.
See also: Restaurant City recipes: full list with ingredients · Restaurant City ingredients by rarity
Every dish served pays 2 coins, whatever the recipe, and adds gourmet points: 1 for a level 1 recipe and a little more for higher ones. Customers arrive, sit down, order, eat and pay, so what counts is serving many dishes.
Open the editor with the hammer icon. There you spend coins on tables, chairs, stoves and decorations and place them by dragging them from the shop to the floor. With more space and more tables you serve more customers at once; the level table tells you when the room grows.
Friends Street lists the restaurants of other players. Click one to look or visit. Every visit gives a reward, and your first visit to a neighbour gives you an ingredient.
Every day you log in you get a gift ingredient, and one more for each day in a row you come back. Ingredients are the base of your recipes, so logging in every day helps you have something to cook with.
The game saves by itself about every minute and when the tab loses focus. If you reload with F5 or close it abruptly, you can lose your latest earnings, up to a minute. To close calmly use the “Leave” button, which asks for confirmation.
You can only have one game open per account: opening the game in another tab or device closes the previous one.
If loading stops, the game shows a notice with a “Try again” button. You need an up-to-date browser and an internet connection.
Nobody on the team will ask for your password, not even in a ticket. Do not install launchers or Restaurant City files, and be wary of offers of free coins.
If you see an error, open a ticket from Support and attach a screenshot if you can. The team replies on the website.
Create an account on the home page, press “Play” and follow the tutorial: character, first helper, first recipe, Friends Street and editor.
At least one cook and one waiter with energy. Without them the closed sign stays up and no customers arrive.
With the “Hire Friends” button, which this website calls the Job Center. If there is no room, level up or sack someone.
2 coins, whatever the recipe, plus gourmet points.
With the editor, the hammer icon: you buy with coins and drag items from the shop to the floor.
A reward for every visit and a gift ingredient the first time you visit each neighbour.
Yes, about every minute and when the tab loses focus. To close calmly use “Leave”.
With the “Enlarge” button, which makes the restaurant bigger inside the window. The stage scales to your window.
Restaurant City is a work by Playfish and Electronic Arts. This is an independent browser edition, in beta, that is not the official site and is not affiliated with Playfish, Electronic Arts, Facebook or Meta. Facebook is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc. The game is only in English.
Pages with real game data to get your restaurant ready: recipes, ingredients, levels and tips.
