This is a very promising game I am rooting for but I cannot recommend this game to others yet.
I've been looking for a game where I can manage the restaurant, have fun making different kinds of dishes and recipes, and also scavenge and farm for ingredients. A game like this is like a dream come true to me and I had a lot of fun playing this. However, the gameplay feels lacking for even an early access title.

The gameplay feels a little incomplete to me. I expected more RPG elements, especially while collecting ingredients and pursuing quests. Without any rpg elements, finding ingredients and completing quests sometimes feel like tedious chores than fun gameplay.
Managing the restaurant is very fun, but some of the cooking mini games feel awkward. The type of game mechanics don't feel appropriate to the type of cooking you are doing so it doesn't feel as satisfying as a conventional cooking game. While the sauteing mini game and the barista mini game were fun, the DDR chopping game, and the flappy-bird type deep frying game felt like awkward combinations. The shooting gallery ice cream maker and ingredient picker blender gameplay just felt like a chore.

Despite its flaws, Chef RPG has so much potential to become a successful game, and I have faith that the developers will work on these issues. I can't wait to see its finished version.

I don't recommend this game right now, and I'm about to go into excruciating detail as to why.

Some important things to know going into this: I haven't finished the main story, I have not explored relationships with the characters, and I have not seen all the seasons all the way through (started in spring and I stopped in late winter). I have put over 40 hours into this, which is a full work week's time, I've hard-focused gameplay over everything else, and I've run several different variations of restaurants. I have positives, neutrals, and negatives to talk about regarding my time in this game.

Tl;dr is this: There is a lot of potential, but this needs a lot of work. I will continue to play this, and I look forward to the day I can change my review.

POSITIVES (Things I really enjoyed.)
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-Menu Flexibility-: I feel like this one is a little more complicated, because there are different levels to how I perceive this, BUT overall I do enjoy that you can set your restaurant's type. My first iteration was a small patisserie, very cozy, and even though it wasn't bringing in massive profits it was still incredibly enjoyable. I had the most fun in my little bakery, for sure.

-Sound Design/Music-: There are a couple of noises that don't really... Work. BUT the vast majority of them do. I think the music is very well done, I like the change in background tracks for each season and I think they all fit the vibe very well. I did indeed hum along to every melody I heard, at some given point!

-Quick Travel-: It's handy and I like having it. Not much else to say, other than it's definitely a positive for me. I'd like to see more quick travel points in the future, but right now this is still very good.

-Foraging-: I love foraging in game, collecting things, getting all the stuff, and the foraging in this game fully scratches that itch. I'm a little less enthusiastic about the hunting system, but it's still above average. The crops, though, the berries and leaves and gardening, and everything, I just love it. I love the sound effects, I love the animations, it's really wonderful. I would like to see a foraging system built off the weather (apart from just 'no things' in winter) with different foods available at different seasons. Eventually. After the other stuff.

NEUTRALS (Things I noticed, but they don't affect the game heavily.)
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-Visual Glitches-: These pop up here and there. They don't break the game, in my experience, but they do need some fine-tuning. In the middle of service, sometimes an order will pop up at the second an ingredient runs out. The order tab at the top of the screen will rapidly flash until you leave the restaurant. There will also be NPCs loading in, and while they're loading at the edge of the frame, they're naked. No bits or pieces, just no clothes.

-Art-: The art for me is hit or miss. Some of it is beautiful, some of it doesn't look good to me at all. And I can say that for character portraits, environment... The only art that's consistently 'WOW' for me is the art of the food. Which, if you've got a game about food, that's important.

-NPCs and Breaks-: The food holding thing when an NPC goes on break needs to be fixed, but it didn't hurt the game too much for me. A little annoying, but nothing that just destroys the game.

-Minigame Bugs-: I don't hate the arcade-style mini games, but sometimes they just don't work. This hasn't broken anything for me, but it's obnoxious and I can see how people would get upset about it. As soon as I can put something on auto, I do, so maybe that's why it's not as big of a deal for me.

NEGATIVES (Things I didn't like at all.)
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-Early-on Bugs-: You encounter story-breaking bugs very early on in the soft opening quest line. From reading people's experiences, it seems multiple things are causing this to break. From my experience, it was opening the restaurant for my own interest before the soft opening. If having that option is going to completely take the player off track, then get rid of the option to do it. It is pretty early on when this happens, so it's not too much of a penalty, but because it happens so soon more people are seeing it and more people are having trouble with it. I've also heard of similar things happening to grand openings, but mine went smoothly.

-Dialogue-: It's really hard to write dialogue effectively. Most people don't realize how good dialogue sounds, but we do realize when it's bad dialogue. Dialogue shouldn't be written as ideas. A lot of the characters in this game don't talk how people talk. And it comes off as something you don't want to engage with. I feel a good way to judge player interest in your story line and game is to see what percentage of players have which achievements. 11% of players have the 'went on a first date' achievement, and that's it. It might change over time, as the game's just released, but that's about 1/10th of an engagement. Of course, you're not required to have a relationship with an NPC, but with that option on the table, very few of us are taking it. And it's not a super-gated option, either.

-Recipe Randomization-: I don't like the way you discover recipes in this game. I think the randomization, and existing loot tables, are horribly broken the way they are. I must have gotten that cranberry tiramisu 20 different times (and I have no vendor to sell recipes to, or at least I can't find one). I think there needs to be a core recipe loot table for every single food category, and then rarer recipes offered as supplemental items. I don't want random recipes to go away entirely, I think there's some fun with that. But we need a reliable source for where that's coming from.

-Ingredient Availability-: This is more minor than other things on the list, but depending on what you want your restaurant to be, some of the ingredients aren't easy to come by. Sugar cane is one of them. If you get your relationship up with Theo, then he'll eventually sell it. However, items like coffee, sweet tea, matcha tea latte, and other items that can make up the core of a player's menu (especially for a teahouse, for example) are heavily penalized. There are elderberry bushes all over, but there are only three sugar cane nodes. Speaking of which...

-Tea Leaves-: Tea leaves need to be far more readily accessible to players than just mountainside foraging. These are critical items for the machine that helps your workers stay energized/not go on break, and how you play the game should not affect whether or not you have reliable access to this. There needs to be a vendor, I'm thinking the supermarket one, who ALWAYS sells tea leaves. Every hour of every day. I don't think this needs to be the case for all ingredients, and I like most things about the vendor system. However, tea leaves are non-negotiable. They're essential.

-Clearer Quest Direction-: Some of the quests to advance the story aren't as obvious as they should be. This isn't a big deal, they just need to be re-approached. It might be obvious what to do if you're a dev who's been working on the game for months, but for players who have no active quests in their log and aren't explicitly told and reminded to check the mail to advance? When mechanics and expanded gameplay is gatekept by story advancement, you've got to treat the player like they're five. The optional stuff, the side quest, the icing on the cake, THAT is where freedom and 'figure it out yourself' works best.


Fun Fact: I found out the Steam review word limit today. I've never hit it before. So, speaking quickly, I feel the negatives outweigh the positives heavily right now. They affect core gameplay and can affect how you progress. I wouldn't be so harsh if it was just 'annoying things on the side', but there are critical issues right now. I really, really hope they get fixed.

Right now I cant recommend the game.

It has really good bones, and its fun to play but there are a few things that draw you out of the enjoyment.

Examples:
1. Dialogue. some of the dialogue is funny. Some of it is on the border of funny and rude, and then some of it is just plain un-necessary. I think whoever wrote some of it really should be seeing a therapist. (not a dig, just genuine concern). This critique of the dialogue isnt from the story stand point and its from the conversations with the NPCs. The relationship options arent even fully fleshed out and yet there is enough dialogue to get a idea of who would be fun to date in game, and its a shame that the majority of it is off putting, rude and unnecessary. For some of the characters to be true red flags and not the haha "i can fix them" rude until they like you and then they are nice kind of character that is always in these kinds of games, is just unneeded. It has truly soured my experience of the game.
(example: If you need to see it for yourself, just do the beach date with Aloys. Yeah there is a warning that they do not want to go to the beach but that was my only option because the bathhouse and the town was grayed out/unavailable , and i didn't think it would be as horrible as it was so i tried it but the entire dialogue sequence is just alarming. don't have that as a option for us to click, and then have it be such a visceral alarming experience. Not every player may have been in a abusive relationship before, but i have and the dialogue is triggering.)

2. Recipes: the random recipes you can buy and find are really fun! However paying for the random recipes from common-epic price point, and getting the notification you already have the recipe and now you have wasted your money, is not fun.

Suggestions for things I would like to see moving forward:
1. DIALOGUE CHANGE, that's necessary.
2. the ability to have the fridges in both the tea house and the restaurant to be intertwined, its so difficult seeing/remembering whats needed for which recipes in each plan and where is where. I know that's part of the fun for some people, but for the ones that find it frustrating it would be nice to have that option.
3. I would like the ingredients that you can find to change some with the seasons. At least at the Maes farm, if not the land.
4. It would be nice for the system to know which recipes you already have so you don't waste your money.