Cooking in Restaurant City: Where to Get Your Ingredients

Restaurant City is a flash-based restaurant simulation game on Facebook by Playfish. Once you have your restaurant set up and decorated, the main thing to do is learn how to make new dishes. Each dish has a recipe with one to four ingredients. Each dish has ten levels, and each level of a dish consumes a full set of ingredients, so as you level up to 10, you'll need ten sets. There are over two hundred different dishes and nearly a hundred different ingredients, and more are introduced to the game every few weeks. Some dishes are only offered for a limited time, which makes it a challenge to collect their ingredients and learn level 1 before they disappear from the list.

So where do you get Restaurant City ingredients? There are seven main ways: the first time you load up the game each day, the daily food quiz, gardening, the market, visiting a friend for the first time, getting gifts from friends, and trading with friends. Also, Restaurant City fans (from clicking the Like button) often receive ingredient gifts.

You can get up to five ingredients every day just by loading the game. You always get at least one ingredient, but Restaurant City rewards the number of days in a row you show up. Two days in a row will get you two ingredients, three days in a row will get you three, and so on. On the sixth day it goes back to one ingredient and starts over.

Each day, there is a new pop quiz question in your messages. The quizzes are always about food in some way, or occasionally about the Restaurant City game. Pick the correct answer out of three choices in ten seconds or less, and you win a free ingredient.

Quizzes don't pile up in your messages if you don't play, however. You get one quiz for each day that you load the game, and none for days you don't, so be sure to play every day to get the most number of ingredients.

Outside of your restaurant to the upper right, there is a big patch of dirt. When you first start out, you won't be able to plant anything, but as you level, you'll unlock up to nine spots where you can plant seeds for 2,000 coins each. These seeds sprout and grow as you water them, and are ready to harvest in 48 watered hours. Nothing bad happens if they go dry; they just stop growing until someone waters them.

It's random which Restaurant City ingredients sprout, and not every ingredient can be grown in the garden. Among those that can are basil, oregano, coriander, garlic, bay leaves, tea, coffee, vanilla, sugar, saffron, wasabi, mint, and ginger. New ones show up in the garden as new ingredients are introduced to the game.