In short: You're Armand, a sparkling-new chef whose uncle Michel just happens to have a shuttered restaurant in Paris. Before you can say "Emeril," Armand is the new executive chef at said restaurant, dealing with finicky eaters and the ominous OmniFoods corporation. Of course, the work isn't confined to the kitchen. You'll have to manage staff, buy decor and meet very high expectations.

In a nice move, the tutorial is built into the campaign. As Armand learns the ropes, so does the player. The tutorial does have its problems. It can sometimes be a bit slow, and information divulged in cutscene discussions between Armand and Michel isn't elaborated upon. I actually thought one feature (staff training) was missing from the final version before I realized it wasn't in the Staff menu, but in the Staff area of the Charts/Goals menu. Luckily, oversights like these are few and far between.

Restaurant Empire is at its heart a patient game. Each month is represented by one day, and you often have a few months to meet set goals. However, most of the necessary work can be done at the start of the day. After that, there's not much to do but sit back and watch the customers. Every so often, an event will demand attention, but even customer complaints are representative of larger problems that can't be fixed by fiddling with settings.

The most action comes during contests. In a sort of Iron Chef homage, Armand and opponents compete in front of a large crowd -- the contestant whose dish fares best gets a medal (an increase in reputation, which draws more people to the restaurants), some cash and a new recipe. During the competition, you get to play mini-games that affect Armand's various skills (concentration, speed, accuracy and so on). These range from hitting a bulls-eye to clicking numbered boxes in order.

Gameplay still has a few rough spots. Most of the action is directed through now-familiar tycoon-style menus; nothing bad there, though they can be daunting. However, as mentioned above some information presented during cutscenes is never elaborated upon, and other features aren't intuitive. My biggest beef: Every single customer complains about the hostess's rudeness. First, I wish complaints were linked to the appropriate menu for a fix (for example, toggle the recipe list when a customer complains about food quality). Second, I still haven't figured out what (aside from salary) affects employee morale, and how to raise it without giving every single employee a raise.

The graphics are a nice use of Sims-type character modeling. Customers toast each other, eat, drink and then leave. They sometimes convey moods, but mostly that's left to icons that appear above customers who are, for example, very unhappy or tired of waiting.

Sounds continues to be Restaurant Empire's worst area. Ambient noise has improved from the preview version, but I was hoping for some sort of music that matched each restaurant's theme. Instead, it's uniformly synth-pop, which is really odd to hear while managing an elegant French-themed eatery.

So, yeah, Restaurant Empire has its rough patches, but overall it's an engaging and fun management sim. Fans of the genre will want to pick it up; those accustomed to more action-packed games might want to look elsewhere.