Time management games are a popular source of entertainment for mobile gamers today who are looking to enjoy some casual fun. A fairly recent addition to the category is Cooking Hot – by mobile gaming studio FlyBird – an exciting restaurant management game that has recently received a 2020 update.
If you played time management games before, then you’re already familiar with their proven recipe. Following the usual script, Cooking Hot puts you in charge of running a series of restaurants, serving customers and ensuring that they are always kept happy and wanting to come back for more.
Cooking Hot is quite varied as it spans across several countries including the U.S., France, Germany and Thailand. Each region features a number of restaurants that you will oversee. For example, in the U.S. you will be in charge of a Stake, Burger and Donut shop, as well as a BBQ joint. Every restaurant boasts its own recipes and equipment that you need to upgrade to ensure the smooth running of the place.
With its cute graphics and casual atmosphere, Cooking Hot can deceptively appear to be a very easy game at first, but fail to pay attention and you will find yourself failing miserably. As you will no doubt find out sooner rather than later, the game features plenty of levels that can be quite hectic and not at all easy to beat.
Fortunately, we’re here to help you in your brave undertaking, so we’ve created this Cooking Hot beginner’s guide that features the best strategies and tricks to help you beat any level the game might throw your way. Are you ready to get started? If so, continue reading below.
1. Always Prepare Dishes In Advance
The basis of Cooking Hot is easy enough to grasp – prepare dishes and serve them quickly to the customers who have requested them in exchange for rewards (likes or cash). This might sound like a piece of cake, but things don’t stay simple for long, as tasks start piling up.
At opening, your restaurants will only feature one plate and a cooker. This means you will only be able to produce a dish at a time. On top of that, cooking a dish takes time especially in the beginning when you don’t have the necessary funds to invest in a faster stove that can serve up multiple dishes a time.
To ensure things run smoothly, we suggest you start preparing dishes in advance from the very beginning, so that you can save time and avoid customers getting upset. Whenever a pan is not being used, make sure to throw something in it. Even when your plates are already full, it’s still a good idea to start frying another batch of food items. For instance, during tougher levels, the plates will be emptied so fast, that you will have no choice other than start cooking dishes immediately after placing the previous batch on the platters.
The only thing you need to worry about here is not being able to clear plates fast enough to make room for the dishes prepared in advance. Once a food items sits too long in a pan it will go up in smoke and you’ll need to throw them away. This does not apply for all items. For example, drinks or desserts won’t get spoiled.
As you upgrade your restaurant and more recipes and extra ingredients are added to the menu, it becomes essential that you cook dishes in advance. Some restaurants are harder than others and require more moves to prepare the dishes, so it takes more time you serve them to the customers.
For example, in the Burger Shop (U.S. region) you will not only have to cook the patties and dogs, but also you’ll need to arrange the buns on the plates before placing the meat on them. In comparison, in the BBQ shop, players only have to fry the chicken or ribs and then simply place them on the plate with one tap.
During high-intensity levels you won’t have time to breathe between orders, so it is crucial that you start preparing new food items as soon as you finish filling the plates with the first round of orders. Always make sure to maintain the constant production of dishes that need to be served if you want succeed during these levels.
2. Mind The Level Objectives
As you start a level, customers will immediately start lining up the counter of your restaurant. Each will place their own order, which you need to complete and serve as quickly as possible, so that you can collect the maximum reward.
Based on the objective of the level, during some levels players need to earn a certain amount of gold coins, with happy customers paying more. Other times they are required to collect a number of likes, which can be acquired when fulfilling tasks quickly and efficiently.
In addition, most levels will flaunt a secondary objective like “don’t burn any dishes” or” don’t trash any food items”. These are rules you are required to abide by, as failure to comply with them will result in having to replay the level and losing one of your five lives.
Levels that don’t come with one of the secondary goals listed above are easier to beat. That’s because you can cook dishes in advance without worrying about them getting overcooked and burned.
Level objective aside, every time you can’t immediately move a cooked item from the pan to an empty plate, the dish will wait to be picked up for a limited amount of time, but not forever. If kept too long, it will eventually burn and you will need to thrash it into the garbage bin, so there’s the potential to be automatically disqualified if you’re not careful.
However, during a level with no secondary goals, you can simply throw a burnt dish in the thrash and continue with your game like nothing happened.
So while the suggestion to cook dishes in advance applies to all levels, you should certainly be more careful when playing a level with secondary goals. In these special cases, try not to overdo the cooking in-advance thing or you risk not being able to complete the level at all.
3. Replay Levels For Extra Cash
If you want to be able to keep up with the deluge of orders coming your way in Cooking Hot, one trick is to upgrade your kitchen equipment and recipes as soon as possible. The problem, however, is that these upgrades don’t come cheap at all, especially when we’re talking gear.
Normally, you’ll be able to collect gold coins – the main currency in the game – by clearing levels. But, at times you won’t be able amass the money you need fast enough. The good news is that you can go back and play the remaining stages of previous levels, as each level features total of three stages. This will unlock more coins for you, thus enabling you to set up a more efficient kitchen faster.
Playing a level’s additional stages becomes a must when players need to collect keys. Throughout the game you are required to collect a number of keys that are needed to unlock new areas and restaurants in the game. Sometimes these keys are offered up as rewards during the first stage, but most often than not you’ll need to put in the extra work to get them.
What do you do if you ran out of levels to play? Check for the purple ones in the main menu area where you’re shown your level progression. These carry extra jobs that when successfully completed can bring in extra gold coins.
Still in need of more cash? From time to time, the game will offer the option to double the earnings from a level by watching an ad. Keep an eye for when that possibility pops up and tap on it (check the lower right corner of the display).
4. Redeem Rewards By Check The Daily Tasks And Achievement Tabs
Each day the game provides players with a series of three tasks to complete. You don’t have to do anything special to thick these boxes – just keep playing the game, clear levels and you’ll be alerted when the rewards are ready to be unlocked.
To check the Daily tasks, tap on the on the second bottom located on the left side of the display. From there you can view the list which can include things like Collect 400 coins from tips or Collect 30 likes.
Once you’ve achieved these objectives in-game, you can redeem rewards in the form of fire, gems and badges (which are spent during in-game events – read more about it in section 6). With enough fire under your belt you’ll be able to unlock chests filled with additional goodies.
While badges and fire are quite useful, gems should be your number one priority. They don’t come just as rewards, but also from playing the game. You normally get 2 gems for beating stage 1 of a level, 4 gems for stage 2 and 6 gems for stage 3.
By playing all stages available, you can amass quite a nice sum of gems. Even so, it might still not be enough, so redeeming as many gems as possible has to become a priority for any player.
Case in point, don’t forget to check the Achievement tab which is located in the left side of the display right above the Daily tasks. Here you have the opportunity to grab gems for every achievement you’ve scored so far. For example, Completing a 3-Combo 2000 times or serving 5000 customers will get you a total of 4 gems.
But what are gems good for, anyway? Well, you can use them in exchange for useful power-ups called Boosts which will be talking about in the next section.
5. Make Use Of Boosts When Things Get Rough
While playing Cooking Hot, it’s not uncommon to realize that no matter how fast you tap and how many dishes you cook & serve, you just can’t crack some levels by yourself. The good news is that the game offers up some assistance in the form of Boosts.
There are several types of Boosts in Cooking Hot, and in this section we will look at them each of them in turn and detail what they do.
Pre-level Boosts are power-ups which can be activated before you start a stage. There are four types of this type of Boost in Cooking Hot:
• Ultra Cooker – food won’t get overcooked anymore
• Double Price – double the coins you’ve earned for one level
• Instant Cook – cooks food instantly
• Combo Twister – slows down the combo timer
Depending on the objective of your level, you will have to decide which Boosts are worth using before you start playing. For example, during levels which require collecting a certain amount of gold coins, it would be beneficial to use the Double Price, whereas in situations where you need to serve a number of dishes, the Instant Cook would be more appropriate. It’s up to you to judge and select the right Boost, or even a collection of Boosts, as you can use more than one during a level.
In-level Boosts are power-ups you can use while you’re busy serving customers. These come in two flavors and can be activated at any time.
• Candy – targets annoyed customers who are low on patience by filling back up their satisfaction meters. One Candy bar improves the mood of one customer.
• Magic Rainbow Cake – works by filling up all your customers’ satisfaction meters. Its effect lasts over an extended period of time.
End-level Boosts are power-ups which pop up at the end of a level which you haven’t managed to beat yet. Need one more like to complete the objective? Maybe one of these Boosts can help:
• More Time – offers you an additional 30s to finish the level
• More Customers – brings in 3 more customers
• More Twister – slows down the combo timer even more
What happens if you run out of Boosts? Well in case of the pre-level ones, you can use gems to get some more. Tap on the Shop button on the top right corner and find the Boosts tab. From there you can spend gems towards bundles of three Boosts.
Mind you, they don’t come cheap so make sure you do everything in your power to stock up on gems. For example, the Ultra Cooker bundle can be yours for 200 gems.
In the same shop, you can use gems as currency to get end-level Boosts. These are even more expensive than the pre-level Boosts, so be careful to check your gem balance before you go spending. A More Time bundle will take you back with 300 gems.
As for the in-level Boosts, you can only find the Magic Rainbow Cake in the shop (150 gems). The game generates bundles of 5x Candies you can redeem at certain time intervals. Need more of those, faster? You can upgrade your Candy Maker so that it can produce 7 instead of 5 bundles (level 1), but to do so costs an additional 150 gems.
Fortunately, if you don’t feel comfortable spending that many gems, the game offers other chances of getting Boosts. Keep reading in the next section to find out how.
6. Take Advantage Of In-Game Events
All sorts of in-game events will be available throughout Cooking Hot. They usually expire within a few days, so that means you’ll get plenty of time to take advantage of them.
You don’t need to do anything out of the ordinary to enroll in these events. Just keep playing like you normally do. The difference is that when events are on, players will usually collect additional rewards after clearing levels.
For example, during The First Season of Cooking Pass players win badges after completing levels. Earning a certain number will unlock several rewards including infinite lives, gems, as well as all kinds of Boosts.
Alternatively, during Crazy Food Rush all you need to do if win three levels without failure to get an infinity Boost for the Candy in-game power-up. This means you will be able to use the Boost during the next levels without worrying that you will run out of them.
Whenever there’s an event going on we recommend that you do your best to be as active as possible in the game, so that you can take advantage of what they have to offer. As we already explained, you will need as many gems, coins and Boosts as you can possibly get and in-game events provide the opportunity to do exactly that.
7. Don’t Forget To Grab The Daily Bonus
Without taking in-game events into consideration, logging in the game on a daily basis is a good idea, because of the daily rewards you redeem.
However, it’s important that players remember to check for said rewards because they are a bit out of sight. From the main menu, tap on the yellow Settings button in the lower left corner and then select the first button. You will find the Daily bonuses there.
Depending on the day you’re checking in there will be either gems, Candy or other sorts of Boosts waiting for you. In case you don’t mind that much you can also watch a quick ad and double your bonus. We do recommend this course of action especially when it comes to gems, as they are very important resources to have when you’re facing harder levels.
8. Try To Survive During Harder Levels
Cooking Hot starts off with deceptively simple levels you won’t have a hard time beating. But the game has some real hard challenges in store and you will need to learn how to survive them.
In this section we’re going to outline some strategies you might want to experiment with when you finally come face to face with a really tricky restaurant situation.
The first thing you need to do is to ensure you’ve updated your kitchen equipment and to the fullest. For example, maybe you’re having a hard time collecting as many gold coins as you need to clear the level. Or perhaps you can’t get enough likes because dishes are cooking way too slow and the customers are getting impatient fast.
If that’s the case, check to see if there’s anywhere you can spend more money on upgrades. Don’t have enough dough? Go back in the game and play some of the remaining stages from the levels you’ve already passed. You’ll not only get the gold coins you need, but also extra gems, and remember you need those for when you run out of Boosts.
Another tactic when you’re dealing with a rough level is to activate some pre-level Boosts to help you move things in the right direction. For example, during a level when you’re supposed to be serving a large number of dishes the Ultra Cooker boost might be a tremendous help, as it enables you to cook dishes in advance and have them waiting for you on the stoves without worrying that they will burn.
The Instant Cook might also be a good choice for this type of level, so depending on how difficult the level is, try out both strategies. Maybe combine a few Boosts too.
Be careful how often you use these Boosts though, because if you run out of them you will have to spend impressive amounts of gems to buy some more (refer to section 5 for more details). Accordingly, it’s a good idea to milk all prospects of grabbing gems as much as you can.
Apart from those we already discussed above, it’s also possible to watch ads in exchange of gems (tap on the second button on the left part of the display). Also, visit the shop in the upper right corner, look around and then exit. You’ll be prompted to watch an ad in exchange for a reward consisting of gems. We suggest you take it up.
Need even more gems? Log in with your Facebook and you will get 50 extra gems. In addition, in case you run out of lives, you will be able to ask your Facebook friends to send you more juice, so consider doing it!
Even with the help of pre-level Boosts, some levels will still seem impossible to crack. In such cases, you might use the gems at your disposal to purchase some end-level Boosts. But what if you don’t want to spend 100 gems on one? Well, there might be an alternative you could try. Exit the game and wait until the next morning to play the level again.
The first few times in a day that you fail a level the game offers the opportunity to watch an ad in exchange for 10 additional seconds (or 1 extra customer). This only works for the first few levels you play, so later on in the day you won’t have this option anymore. So remember, it’s a good idea to abandon a hard level you can’t seem to beat now and pick it up again the next day. This way you also conserve your hard won gems.
Finally, we want to point out yet another trick which might prove useful during levels that task you with collecting a certain sum of money. Try serving customers in fast succession and you’ll be able to initiate a combo chain (of up to five serves) that brings in more cash. During the rush hour, when you’ll be tapping your fingers numb due to the avalanche of orders, applying this strategy won’t be a problem.
With this we wrap up our Cooking Hot beginner’s guide in the hopes that you have enjoyed reading it and that you’ve learned plenty of new ways to enhance your tactics to win levels. If you have knowledge of any tips or tricks we haven’t discussed in this guide, feel free to share them with us via the comment section below!