Woah! What a Hot Dish!

I like to think of myself as a hot dish who as every man's fantasy, can also cook a hot dish. I want to be a hybrid of an Italian mother who pinches cheeks and always has a lasagna in the oven and antipasti in the fridge, and Elle MacPherson. I decided to work on one alchemical transmogrification at a time, and practice my cooking skills.

Luckily I found help in the game Hot Dish by Big Fish Games. It's a simulation of cooking for restaurants of different styles, starting off with high-spirited Mama Giovani's for rapacious appetites, graduating to the fiercer edges of Bushido Wok, and if you're talented enough, reaching the pinnacle, five-star Chez Velours. As the expectations become higher of you, the "trial cook," with each respective chef, the dishes more complicated. This game is good at characterizing the chefs to either dote on you with expressions of approval - take Mama Giovani's "Yummy Yum!" - or instill fear in you with the disapproving "Mon Dieu!" (my God) of the stuffy French.

The goal is to improve your capacity for stress as well as delicious and hot, time-managed delivery of food. The specific goal in my fantasy world became lofty: to be able to cook a baguette and creme brulee of foie gras fit for Le Bernardin. But then I remembered that I was after Elle meets your Italian grandmother, not some caricature of a fastidious fop with a beret. So to hell with the croissant and pate! I was thrilled that I was able to mince garlic for the paunchy Mama Giovani's pizza sauce while at the same time boiling water for her lasagna.

I loved the sound effects and cursor motions of the grating and chopping, stirring and stuffing. They were necessary to make me feel like I was actually in each kitchen with the rosy, glowering or peevish Chef, smelling the heavenly ingredients simmering. Sure, it's not exactly a Wii (Hey now that's not such a bad idea...a Wii game for cooking simulation), but it's a great tool for learning the multitasking and careful step-by-step nature of cooking when the stakes are high.

So high that there are faces to your fate: the expressionless bureaucratic inspector who watches while you haphazardly clean up by scrambling tiles around like you know what you're doing and eliminating pests; and worse, the prim and proper food critic, Julia Daravich, who can ruin you with a smile.

Because what's a restaurant without PR? And what's PR without a review? Ah velors, isn't it enough for a girl to look pretty and provide a hot dish full of personality, even if her apron full of pizza sauce is twisted around her neck? In my book that deserves five stars (too bad it's not a book that's going to be published anywhere).

In playing this game just remember, it's only a meal...for a paying customer (wink). And there's always a next meal.

Until dessert,
Flower Child

DOWNLOAD HOT DISH HERE>>

Comments

[Lisa]

This was lots of fun to read. :) The Wii has a cooking sim game called Cooking Mama, of which this game reminded me.