You’ve been invited to one of the most fancy restaurants in the world. Being such an exclusive restaurant, however, you’ll need to bid on your food with gems. In Bon Appetit! you are looking to get the most points by bidding on the best foods around to win them.
To start off Bon Appetit! you must place down the value card. This is a very important part of the game as it tells you exactly how much each gem is worth. The value of each colored gem change throughout the game, so this counter will always be updated and in view. The gems are then randomly plucked out of a bag, with the first color drawn being the highest value, and so on, until all four are placed.
Once this currency has been determined, players will then randomly pull gems out of the bag. The total number of gems drawn will be determined by the number of players taking part in the game. Once the gems are randomly drawn out the real game begins. A dish is placed to be bid on and the next three dishes are placed in the queue. This allows players to see the current dish and the next few dishes, in case they have a plan of what type of foods they want.
Each food has a point value, a description and a type. Some cards have a bonus action, like allowing a colored gem you play be worth one more than the current value or by giving you an extra point when bidding on a specific type of food. Once a food is bid on, players reveal the gems they are bidding one simultaneously. The card will go to the winner and the winner will pay their gems. These gems go back in the bag. The colored gems that were used to bid will go down one value point while the others will go up one value point.
If you did not bid on the card then you are able to grab a new gem from the bag at random, adding it to your wallet. This means that if you run out of gems you can just bid nothing and grab new gems — you’re not really out of the game. This continues until all of the cards are won and the game ends. Players then count up the number of points they have on their food cards to determine a winner.
At UKGE 2019, it was the graphics of Bon Appetit! which drew me to the stand. The food look luxurious, wonderful and exotic. I may have been drawn in by the looks, but it was the mechanics behind the changing value of gems that kept me interested. It is an interesting addition and it makes it so that someone doesn’t have more value than the others for very long. Auction games hadn’t ever been something I played in, but Bon Appetit! had me hooked.
You can purchase Bon Appetit! on the publisher, Board & Dice’s website.
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