Chef's Table 2025

Chef’s Table is a medium-weight, cooperative worker placement game. Players take actions in different areas of the kitchen as they prepare, plate, and improve ingredients (dice), building the perfect 4-course meal for the restaurant’s VIP guests. Kitchen space and ingredients are limited, and players need to be strategic as they manage personal and shared resources.

Players will control a unique kitchen station where they manage a custom pool of ingredients (dice), workers, and special actions. Players select a chef who will lead their station; Chef’s have own unique talents that boost performance as they visit different areas of the kitchen.

Players allocate workers throughout the kitchen, where they use personal or shared ingredients in different ways. The team earns Favor Points for each completed menu item, but will lose points for incomplete items, or ingredients that don’t meet Chef E’Lahn’s standards. Each course is more challenging than the last, requiring more ingredients, higher ingredient quality (dice value), or both.

Service and Course Challenge cards modify how the kitchen operates or elevate the standards for one or more menu items. The difficulty imposed by challenge cards will also escalate, so be prepared! Players can also play against a course timer (Clocked-In mode), which requires even more cooperation and communication.

Think you’ve earned your promotion? Compare the team’s final score to Chef E’Lahn’s service standards: a set of scoring criteria by which your performance is evaluated. Each game, record your team’s name on Achievement Cards. Try new combinations of chefs and stations, ramp of the difficulty of the game by using challenge cards, and test your team to achieve your culinary dreams!

—description from the designer