Best Cooking Games 2023

Just like cooking in real life, the recipe for a good cooking game comes down to the quality of its ingredients and how well they complement each other.

The genre is mainly comprised of simulation-style games that mimic the cooking experience and more arcade-driven cooking games that focus on mini-tasks and time management.

In this list, we’ll highlight the best cooking games to play in 2023, including the best cooking simulation games on PC, mobile, and console.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your favorite cooking games!

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Overcooked 2 is a fast-paced, arcade-inspired cooking game that has up to four players trying to prepare, cook, and expedite food orders while dealing with various environmental hazards.  

One moment you’re cutting up some onions, another you’re combing ingredients to make soup, all the while trying to get as many orders out the door before the timer runs out.

While it sounds easy enough on the surface, things get much more complicated as more ingredients, tasks, and obstacles are introduced.

The sequel introduces online multiplayer support and some fun new mechanics, like the ability to throw ingredients at your fellow chefs from across the map.

Battle Chef Brigade combines the action of side-scrolling platformers with the strategy of tile-matching puzzle games to deliver a one-of-a-kind cooking experience.

In it, you play as an aspiring chef named Mina, who enters a cooking competition to prove her worth and wow judges with delicious meals.

Gameplay is split between exploring 2D platforming levels where you battle enemies for rare ingredients that get incorporated into your dish, and a tile-matching mini-game that determines the final product.

There’s a lot of flexibility and room to experiment with different flavor profiles; however, your main focus is creating a meal that will satisfy each judge’s unique palette.

We couldn’t resist including I Love You, Colonel Sanders as both a joke recommendation and a serious one considering it has a pretty good cooking game premise and is free-to-play.

At the time of its release, KFC was experimenting with various weird marketing moves in hopes of attracting more customers, and what better than a game where you get to make their famous chicken.

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While it’s technically a dating sim that sees you courting the iconic KFC mascot, Colonel Sanders, a significant portion of the game is spent training to become a master chef at culinary school.

Gameplay is a mix of choice-based conversations with a diverse cast of characters and cooking battles presented as mini-game puzzles.

Minecraft is a great recommendation for anyone who enjoys cooking games and combining different ingredients to create something completely new.

Although it focuses heavily on building and exploration, the crafting component is also front and center in everything you do in Minecraft.

Add to this the game’s massive modding community on PC and you can turn one of the most popular survival games into a chef’s dream kitchen.

One of our favorite Minecraft mods for cooking is Minetronic’s Master Chef mod, which adds a host of new food recipes, crops, trees, and block types.

Cooking Simulator takes a more realistic approach to cooking without having to worry about making a mess in your actual kitchen.

It includes over 80 recipes you can unlock and master by combining dozens of ingredients using an assortment of kitchen appliances and utensils.

Since actions are performed in real-time and rely on the game’s physics system, there’s a bit of a learning curve to completing certain tasks.

There are also opportunities to improve your performance by unlocking new perks and a sandbox mode where you can set the whole kitchen on fire with no repercussions.

The Cook, Serve, Delicious series is well regarded by cooking game fans and the latest entry sees you taking your culinary skills on the road as you travel across the US for a food truck competition.

Along the way, you’ll get to prepare hundreds of different food creations with help from two charismatic robot crewmates.

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Additionally, you’ll obtain new game-changing upgrades and fancy trinkets you can use to decorate your food truck.

CSD 3 boasts over a hundred hours of content across its 380+ levels and at around 20 bucks or less if you catch it on sale, is a tremendous value for cooking fans.

Like Battle Chef Brigade, Dungeon Munchies is a side-scrolling platformer that has you battling monsters and using their parts for both cooking ingredients and weapon crafting materials.

Prepared dishes provide your character with special buffs and abilities that can impact your playstyle and increase survivability as you explore a strange underground facility.

Any food deemed too gross to consume goes towards crafting and upgrading gear, including various elemental swords and guns.

With some hard work and a bit of help from your undead necro-chef assistant Simmer, you’ll fight to stay alive long enough to find a way out.

If you’ve ever wondered how you would fare as a pizza shop owner, then Good Pizza, Great Pizza will give you a peek into how the other half of the pie lives.

In it, you play as the owner of a new pizza shop as they try to fulfill customer orders while maintaining consistency and delivering top-notch quality with every slice.

This includes serving over 100 different customer types with distinct personalities and topping preferences.

Do a good job and you’ll start raking in cash to spend on equipment upgrades and turn your small-time pizza joint into a neighborhood staple.

Diner Bros takes more of an Overcooked-style approach to cooking, complete with frantic, arcade-inspired gameplay that revolves around preparing dishes for customers as fast as you can.

This includes receiving orders, following custom instructions, serving them food and drink, and remembering to clean up the table once they’ve left.

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There are several customer types who will keep you on your toes with special requests and gameplay modifiers, such as thieves who try to sneak out of the restaurant without paying.

After successfully running the business for consecutive days, you’ll get the opportunity to upgrade your restaurant and expand the dining area, unlock new recipes, hire additional staff, and more.

Since there’s no such thing as too much pizza, we’re recommending another cooking game that sees you turning pizza dough into dough you can spend.

Pizza Express is a fast-paced restaurant sim with a delicious pixel art aesthetic developed by one-man studio Onni Interactive.

In it, you join a crackpot pizza duo as they set out to become the best eatery in town in less than a month by wowing customers and critics with original pizza creations.

From toppings to price point and naming your creations, the game offers total control over your restaurant’s menu and includes 250+ difficulty settings for increasing or reducing the level of challenge.

GameHouse is known for its shared universe of adventure games with time management elements akin to classics like Diner Dash.

While there are a handful of entries centered on cooking, we’ve chosen to highlight Mary Le Chef: Cooking Passion for both its story and catchy soundtrack.

In it, you play as a young woman with dreams of becoming a chef despite her parent’s encouragement to pursue a career in law.

Experience her story as it unfolds across six captivating chapters where you’ll prepare over 70 different dishes and get to expand your restaurant’s layout and menu.

Cooking Trip: Back on The Road is another throwback to early arcade cooking games and has you tapping into your inner chef as you travel to restaurants across the globe.

The story focuses on restaurant owners Mary and John after they’re eliminated from a chef competition; determined to grow, the pair set off on a cooking adventure spanning three countries.

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While visiting restaurants in France, Germany, and America, you’ll learn how to prepare special dishes and hone your skills throughout 60 exciting cooking levels.

Perform well and you’ll unlock upgrades for both characters and restaurants, in turn attracting more customers and revealing hidden bonus tasks for an added challenge.

While admittingly a bit long in the tooth, Burger Shop 2 is still a phenomenal old-school cooking game with a satisfying gameplay loop.

Picking up after the original Burger Shop, it sees you down in a dumpster with no memory of what caused your previous chain of restaurants to go belly-up.

As you attempt to rebuild your burger empire by adding new twists to your menu in order to dazzle customers, you’ll uncover the truth about what happened to your original chain.

Included are Story, Expert, Challenge, and Relaxed game modes with 120 levels to complete and 100+ trophies to collect as you discover new recipes and customer types.

The life of a baker isn’t easy and there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong, from imprecise measurements to faulty equipment or burning your bread because you forgot to take it out of the oven.

Bakery Simulator aims to show you the ins and outs of the craft without any of the real-world risks of screwing things up by exposing you to simulated bakery machines and processes.

You’ll wake up early to get a start on the day’s orders, learn to bake dozens of different bread types, pack and deliver orders to customers, and earn money to invest back into the business.

It’s a lot more detailed than you’d expect, complete with an open-world, dynamic economy, and shifting customer base that will force you to think outside the box without sacrificing quality.

There’s been a fair amount of innovation in the VR cooking game niche, so we figured we’d highlight at least one game to convince you to pick up a headset for yourself.

Rags to Dishes is a single-player cooking game that transports you back to the medieval ages where hungry villagers are waiting to be served whatever you cook up.

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Your adventure begins with you cooking for peasants at a shoddy little booth; over time, you’ll work your way up and gain an audience with the Royal Court for a shot at becoming the best chef in the land.

As you progress and improve your standing with high society, you’ll be able to buy upgrades and unlock new recipes for your food stand.

Soup Pot made its debut during E3 2021 and is expected to release by the end of the year, giving you ample time to get through many of the other games already mentioned.

It’s a cooking sim that focuses on creativity and capturing the open-ended nature of home cooking by letting you experiment with different ingredients across 100+ unique recipes.

Unlike other cooking sims that want you to follow specific instructions, Soup Pot keeps things pretty loose, allowing you to see your dishes through to the end, even if they turn out looking like a hot mess.

This includes the option to plate dishes how you see fit and snap pics to share with an in-game social media platform where you can grow an audience and get feedback on your latest creations.