Highlights

• Mobile cooking games offer a fun and engaging way to learn how to "cook" while on the go; you can explore different recipes and manage your own restaurant.
• For instance, Animal Restaurant is a heartwarming game where you cook for and run a restaurant with adorable animals.
• From post-apocalyptic food trucks to grassroots food stands, cooking games like Gunman Taco Truck and Eatventure offer unique cooking experiences in challenging environments.

Whether they are cozy, casual, or chaotic, we all love a good cooking game. From food prep to restaurant management, these games have a lot of fun mini-games and mechanics to offer. You might even learn how to cook a meal or two. For some cooking on the go, mobile cooking games are the perfect option.

Diner Dash released a wave of restaurant management tycoon games onto mobile app stores, and if you are looking to get your hands even messier, there are tons of cooking games that get into the nitty-gritty. Here are some of the best cooking games for Android and iPhone.

Updated October 25, 2023 by William Quick: Not all of us can cook or even like cooking, but all of us like food. No matter where you go, you can always find something that tastes good and makes you feel good after finishing. There's a lot of pleasure in eating, but there's also a lot of pleasure in cooking. It's like a combination of science and art, chemistry where you get to be creative with all a manner of ingredients and only the slightest risk that it'll explode.

Even if you're not interested in cooking, cooking games have proven to be some of the most enjoyable and engaging both on consoles and handheld systems. Sometimes you just want to sit back and whip something up which is why you can turn to any of the following games to have on your phone for when you get the urge to play with your food.

19 Animal Restaurant

Why are animals the absolute best? There are a lot of reasons, but I guess the most prominent is that they're innocent. They're creatures that are so closely connected to the world and each other that you can't help but like them and that's why Animal Restaurant gives you the chance to cook for them.

Once you start playing, you realize it's not just a restaurant for animals, but it's a restaurant run by animals as well. This little eatery has a lot of heart and sincerity in it, and it's your job that all of your little animal friends get a chance to feel that. Of course, you're also trying to make a successful business where you have to decide on the right decor and provide quality service to get maximum customer satisfaction. From there, you can expand, learn new recipes, and hire new animals to work for you to feed the animals of the world.

18 Eatventure

Food is a necessity for survival, but it's also a business. There are many food-related industries that focus on quantity over quality and as a result, are able to provide low prices that appeal to many people. You can watch and help such a business grow in Eatventure.

This is a take on the idea of a grassroots origin story by having you start as a little food stand on the sidewalk. You'll get a few customers here and there which will net you money that can be spent on equipment that will produce food and drinks even faster. As you do that, you'll get more and more customers lining up for your products which will let you afford to hire some new employees. From the streets to the city, you'll be climbing the ladder of success where each rung is one of your food products.

17 Gunman Taco Truck

In post-apocalyptic scenarios, certain businesses are guaranteed to thrive, such as those that provide food or water. In this environment, fast food could be considered a luxury and that's why it's both dangerous and exciting to be the cook and driver of the Gunman Taco Truck.

The desert wasteland is a perfect place to sell your tacos to the wandering survivors and bandit groups who are tired of eating vermin. While driving along the road from location to location, obstacles and mutated creatures will get in your way, and you'll need to shoot them down to protect your truck and gather more ingredients. After you park, customers will line up to request tacos with a mix of ingredients, and even at the end of the world, you're expected to provide quality service. Hey, truck and gun parts don't pay for themselves!

16 Hunt Cook

With all the cooking shows floating around, we like to hope that the restaurants we go to will be keeping things clean and using the freshest ingredients. While this isn't always the case, you can get a feel for it in Hunt Cook which shows just how fresh ingredients can be before cooking.

You're a chef who has opened a little restaurant away from the cities and towns and close to nature. While this may not be the most convenient for customers and businesses, it's prime for cooking and quality. Since you're on you're own, you've got to do everything which includes heading out into nature to gather fruits and vegetables and hunting game like birds and fish. You'll have your dog to help you out in your outings so that when you come back, you'll have a variety of fresh ingredients to cook a number of recipes to satisfy all your customers.

15 Diner Dash

We mentioned that Diner Dash's popularity essentially created a wave of restaurant games. If you have yet to play Diner Dash, we recommend giving it a try; there are several games within the franchise, with the newest game, Diner Dash Adventures, being available on mobile.

Diner Dash Adventures has a refreshed art style from the original 2003 game, allowing you to cook over 300 different recipes. Overall, if you are a fan of cooking games then Diner Dash is definitely a great one to have.

14 Good Pizza, Great Pizza

How hard could it be to make a pizza? Good Pizza, Great Pizza is a dreamy pastel-colored pizza tycoon game that pits you against a rival pizzeria just across the street. In a world that values pizza over almost everything, can you grow Good Pizza, Great Pizza into a pizza empire?

In an interesting twist, the toughest part of this game is not making the pizzas themselves but interpreting the orders of your fickle customers. It's surprisingly quite realistic to what it is actually like working in food service.

13 Cooking Mama: Let's Cook

Let's face it, Cooking Mama is the quintessential cooking game. If you have always wanted to try Cooking Mama but never owned a Nintendo system, now is your time to shine. Cooking Mama: Let's Cook is free to play on both Android and iPhone.

Cooking Mama: Let's Cook has all the classic cooking mini-games to prepare and cook brand-new recipes. However, in a fun new twist, this mobile game introduces Happy Village, bringing with it fishing and farming mechanics on top of a classic diner dash mini-game.

12 Cooking Simulator Mobile

If you are looking for a straightforward cooking simulator to show you the ins and outs of crafting homemade meals, Cooking Simulator is the perfect place to start, and it is available for mobile! Learn what it takes to be a cook in a busy restaurant kitchen and keep up with busy demands all while preparing gourmet meals.

Since Cooking Simulator was originally designed to be played on PC and consoles, mastering the controls on your phone might prove a little tricky, but if you like a challenge with a dash of chaos, give this game a go.

11 Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Toting itself to be one of the hardest restaurant simulators on the market, Cook, Serve, Delicious takes the simple premise of the Diner Dash formula while stepping it up a notch. In this game, you'll need to learn to assemble all your meals yourself and on the double.

In Cook, Serve, Delicious you are battling not just against the clock, but essentially to achieve total perfection. The game will keep you on your toes in its evolving mechanics and the surprising sense of humor it evokes.

10 Hungry Hearts Diner

While on its surface Hungry Hearts Diner might look like a simple restaurant management simulator, it has a surprising amount of heart. Set after World War 2, Grandma has to manage the diner all on her own now, but the customers she meets during her day-to-day will not only teach her new recipes but reveal new parts of her story.

There is not much in the way of food prep when it comes to Hungry Hearts Diner, but each time a new recipe is unlocked, you have the opportunity to learn a little more about dishes from traditional Japanese cuisine.

9 What's Cooking? Tasty Chef

You might not get the opportunity to chop up your own veggies or tenderize any meat, but much like the new Cooking Mama: Cuisine! For Apple Arcade, What's Cooking? Tasty Chef is all about combining raw ingredients to discover new recipes.

Also known as What's Cooking? - Mama Recipes on the App Store, with plenty of mini-games and an adorable Shiba Inu puppy to cheer your culinary adventures along, What's Cooking? Tasty Chef is a fun and casual cooking game to pick up for your phone.

8 Too Many Cooks

Do you love Overcooked? Then you need to check out Too Many Cooks. This cooking party game puts your teamwork to the test, as you must work together to cook against the clock.

Play with up to five friends online or co-op, or play on your own! You can even unlock outfits for your chef the more you play, giving you tons of adorable customization options. This game gets bonus points just for the hilarious sound design.

7 The Cook - 3D Cooking Game

Prep food with just a smidgen of chaos in The Cook - 3D Cooking Game. Run a food truck and travel the world to discover new recipes. Unlike so many cooking games, you do not have to race against the timer, giving you the time to enjoy wildly cutting your veggies.

Rather than timeliness, your success is measured by how well you perform each task. There is something extremely satisfying about a cooking game where you get to take things a little slow.

6 Big Cooking

Run your very own kitchen in restaurants all over the world in Big Cooking. Assemble ingredients to whip up dishes to meet your customers' requests without making them wait too long.

This is a great option for anyone who loves Overcooked or wants a little more evolved approach to Diner Dash. The game can become quite involved the longer you play, creating a chaotic cooking challenge.

5 Toca Kitchen 2

Maybe you do not want to be confined by the rules of cuisine, forced to chop vegetables and make delicious dishes. What you want is to experiment. To create chaos. Well, then Toca Kitchen 2 is the mobile cooking game made just for you.

You have a whole pantry full of ingredients ready for you to do what you will, and three "food testers" willing to open their mouths wide to receive whatever strange concoctions you cook up. On its surface, it might look like a kids' game, but Toca Kitchen 2 is also the cursed cooking game you never knew you needed.

4 Toca Kitchen Sushi

Toca Kitchen Sushi is another game in the Toca series, this time taking place in a seaside restaurant. Like Toca Kitchen 2, this game gives you the creative freedom to make any dish you want. Because of this, Toca Kitchen Sushi is just as chaotic as the other game, which means you can make some truly strange concoctions.

All games from developer Toca Boca aim to inspire creativity while educating. If you don't know much about seafood or sushi, Toca Kitchen Sushi is a great way to get familiar with them!

3 Papa's Pizzeria To Go!

Once again, we have another pizza-based game. Something about making a giant pizza with delicious toppings is just so enticing. Papa's Pizzeria is another classic game, first released in 2007. Now, you play this classic pizzeria game directly on your phone.

In addition to preparing pizzas, you will need to multitask at the different stations. For example, you will need to take orders, add the required pizza toppings, and cut the pizza flawlessly, all while keeping everyone happy. With the money you earn from selling pizza, you will also be able to decorate your restaurant.

2 World Chef

World Chef gives you the ultimate freedom to run a restaurant however you choose. Rather than being locked into one type of food, you can choose what to make. There are several cuisine types, including Greek, Thai, Russian, Brazilian, and Scandinavian.

Along with cooking from your cuisine of choice, you can decorate your restaurant however you choose. As more customers leave happy, you can expand and even purchase additional properties.

1 Restaurant Story 2

Lastly, we have Restaurant Story 2. In this cooking game, you will get the chance to cook for your customers, as well as decorate and grow your own produce. Within your garden, you will be able to grow herbs and spices to add to your dishes, making them even tastier.

Restaurant Story 2 is time-based, which means that between cooking, you will need to wait for short periods of time. For example, it takes one minute to make French toast. If you want to make spaghetti though, that will take a full six minutes.

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