Critter Kitchen
Send fast and slow chefs across Bistro Bay, then serve the critic your best seven-course meal.
Critter Kitchen is a 2025 retail release by Cardboard Alchemy and Lucky Duck Games, designed by Alex Cutler and Peter C. Hayward. In seven rounds, rival restaurants secretly assign a mouse, lizard and boar chef to different locations, then collect ingredients in speed order. A fast mouse picks one item first; a slower boar can carry three. You score challenge meals after rounds three and six, then assemble a critic meal after round seven.
Lucky Duck lists one to five players and about 60 minutes. The solo mode pits you against the McDogald’s automa rather than asking you to run multiple restaurants. The creator and Lucky Duck list ages 12+, while Asmodee’s US retail page says 10+; check the age label on the copy sold in your market. The optional À La Cart expansion adds carts and a distinct six- or seven-player procedure, but the base game is complete without it.
The choice that drives a round
Each chef goes to a different location, selected simultaneously and in secret. At a location, carrying capacity one picks before two, which picks before three; equally fast chefs use the changing priority track. A large chef at a crowded vendor may arrive after the best ingredients disappear. Sending that chef to the Soup Truck can be safer, but soup does not replace an ingredient in the final critic meal. You have to weigh a short-term challenge against a strong final course.
The seven-round arc
The first six rounds reveal challenges that pay stars at the end of each three-round day. A challenge meal needs its printed ingredients, though soup can stand in for a missing requirement if at least one required ingredient is real. Its quality determines a one-, two- or four-star award. Refrigeration then restricts leftover ingredients and spices to five after day one and ten after day two. Rumors, a visible critic card and the restaurant’s best ingredients guide the final seven-course meal after round seven.
The scoring guide separates those meals from the final critic’s course comparisons and quality track. The strategy guide examines chef speed, capacity, soup, rumors and refrigeration with conditional examples.
A round at a glance
Reveal the next challenge and fill location spaces from the token bag.
Assign secret, different destinations to mouse, lizard and boar.
Resolve locations left to right; at each, faster chefs choose before bigger carriers.
After rounds three and six, score challenges; after seven, serve the critic.
What makes the restaurants compete?
Visible items invite prediction, but assignments stay hidden until chefs are sent. At each location, ties in carrying capacity use priority order, which can change after a contested first pick. The Chef Academy receives leftovers and offers a one-round zous-chef; the Midnight Merchant stocks only once shopping reaches it. A chef returning empty gets consolation soup. Those rules make a plan depend on both the destination and which chef you send.
Challenge meals do not deny stars to another player: each restaurant can make its own meal for each revealed card. Competition reappears in shared ingredients, the critic’s best-of-each-course awards, soup comparison and final total. Learn the precise queue and meal sequence before teaching the game.
Who may enjoy it?
Consider it if your group likes simultaneous hidden plans, visible market competition and a longer payoff from collecting seven ingredient types. It also has an official solo opponent. The cute art does not remove the need to track chef queues, card effects and two kinds of scoring, so a teaching session may take more attention than the illustration suggests. A regular group of six or seven needs the expansion’s break-time rules and added components.
For a substantially different restaurant game, Food Chain Magnate focuses on staff, advertising and demand rather than meals assembled from a shared token bag. Choose by the decisions your table wants, not the food theme alone.
Explore the full guide
Sources and scope
- Cardboard Alchemy English rulebook (PDF)
- Searchable text of the rulebook
- Lucky Duck Games retail product
- Asmodee UK retail release
Checked 4 October 2026. This page covers the English retail base game and identifies expansion rules separately. The strategy and suitability comments are editorial deductions, not a claim of firsthand testing. Product age labels differ by seller; consult your box.