I’m taking this post as an opportunity to share the origin story of Chef's Choice. To understand how we got here, you first need to understand my circumstances: My girlfriend and I finished university in the autumn of 2024, and we both shared a dream of moving to Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city. I found a job there, she landed a 100% remote position, and since January 2025, we’ve called Hamburg our home.

However, no sooner had we arrived than the FOMO kicked in. I needed a hobby. And I don’t mean hitting the gym, going to the cinema, reading, or playing video games—I’ve always done those, and I can do them anywhere. No, I needed something that felt connected to life in Hamburg. Since I’m a fan of board games, I found a local club where I started meeting up regularly for board and card games. They also happen to host monthly sessions where game designers can bring their prototypes to test with others. That’s when the idea of developing a board game of my own took root in April 2025.

Of course, that was still a long way from the Chef's Choice we know today. Initially, I wanted to conceive an analog version of something like Hearthstone Battlegrounds—a card-based auto-battler. But after a few test rounds at home, it became clear: the flow, the combat, the calculations, and the post-round shopping were simply too complicated, and a shared card pool for all players proved difficult to implement. So, I scrapped that idea for the time being.

Every spring/summer, I get obsessed with Stardew Valley. That inspired my next idea: a solo card game where you work your way through a mine (a deck of cards) floor by floor, collecting gems and resources, fighting monsters, and doing a bit of farming to get deeper into the mine on the next run. This idea actually made it quite far, but it was eventually put on ice because I had less and less time to focus on it—a new "side quest" had emerged.

I work as a computer scientist for one of Germany’s most renowned newspapers. Part of my job is ensuring that our digital content is displayed correctly for all readers; this sometimes involves reading through our articles to check for technical accuracy. I’m in daily contact with countless articles. One piece from that time was an interview with a young startup founder from Berlin about her fashion label. The article described the "location effect" of Berlin—how being there boosts a startup—and since I had been looking for a hobby with a similar location effect in Hamburg, I toyed with the idea of doing something similar. I have no clue about fashion myself, but I have a girlfriend who models as a hobby and a mother-in-law who is a textile engineer with Summa cum laude.
I dove deep into those thoughts—looking back, it’s honestly astonishing how deep I went. I had a company name, a logo, a Shopify test license, a domain, contacts with textile manufacturers in Italy, and I was on the verge of hiring a lawyer to trademark the brand. The idea was ultimately stopped by three factors: I would have needed my employer's permission to run such a big side project, the trademark lawyer was on vacation, and frankly, I couldn’t really see myself as the founder of a fashion startup.

After the break from that "side quest," I looked at my mining card game much more critically and scrapped that idea, too. My need for new hobbies or game designs had faded for a while.

Then, in October 2025, my boss lent me Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and I was hooked instantly. I fell in love with the game, and just like that, the desire to create a game of my own was ignited all over again. It happened overnight. Subconsciously, I combined all my previous ideas: a solo card game with auto-battler elements, where the "battle" is combining various cards to reach a target score. For those who find this familiar: yes, I have about 5 hours in Balatro, which is essentially the principle here. But unlike Balatro, where you only combine jokers and poker hands (and upgrade via passive bonuses), I wanted to increase the tactical element. I’m not even sure how I ended up with a kitchen setting, but it fit perfectly: cards are ingredients, passive bonuses are kitchen staff, active bonuses are kitchen utensils, opponents have "hunger" as hit points, flavors and food categories can be combined for extra points, and guests have specific dietary needs for different playstyles. There are many more elements that fit perfectly, but I don’t want to give anything away just yet. The important thing is: 

Chef's Choice was supposed to be an analog card game.

I spent about 4 to 5 months tweaking and tinkering with the mechanics before realizing that it was becoming too complex for a board game. Nobody wants to add up to 12 cards after every single hand. So, in February 2026, the thought came up: move Chef's Choice into the digital space. Fortunately, as a computer scientist, I had already had some exposure to video game development, so I wasn't averse to this new challenge.

And that is quite enough about the origin story for now.