History YMMV / CookServeDelicious

** Esteban's in the sequel. Sandwiched between the simple, straightforward Pie Right and the comparatively simple Firekickers, Esteban's is a nightmare of complex, multi-ingredient foods loaded with multiple prep/cooking steps and insidious "gotcha" ingredients with unintuitive default key assignments. It starts out simple enough, but towards the end it reaches maddening levels of difficulty that will test the skill and patience of even the most seasoned ''CSD'' veterans.

*** Firekickers is also significantly easier than Esteban's, the restaurant that immediately precedes it (see ThatOneLevel below), featuring much simpler menu items with far fewer "gotcha" ingredients. One can easily gold-medal the entire former restaurant in less time than it takes just to gold-medal the final 2-3 shifts of the latter.

** In the sequel, the sheer volume of chores one is assaulted with. It's not uncommon for the serving of a single order to generate up to ''four chores at once'', and because chores decay much faster than orders most of the time, shifts tend to devolve into "serve dish, fight off chores, serve dish, fight off chores, repeat ad nauseum", especially during rush hours. The biggest offenders, however, are the Trash and Dishes chores, since not only are they the most time-consuming, but they're also the most frequent of the lot, meaning that while you're dealing with them, orders or ''even other chores'' are slipping away before your eyes, and you may even have two trash or dishes chores queued up at the same time! On the whole, it ends up feeling like FakeDifficulty at its most blatant. It's no wonder, then, that much of the fandom heaved a sigh of relief upon learning that ''[=CSD3=]'' jettisons chores altogether.

** In the sequel, Slammy's Old-Fashioned [=BBQ=] generally has easier shifts than other restaurants at similar levels, thanks to most of the foods being simple to prepare

* ItWasHisSled: It's fairly common knowledge at this point that five platinum stars is the highest possible restaurant rating.
* PortingDisaster: While not as bad as most examples, the mobile versions lag significantly behind the Steam version in terms of content and updates. Among the laundry list of issues: the texting minigame still has the [[NintendoHard absurdly long delay]] between texts (see ScrappyMechanic below), both [=CookBet=] and [[HarderThanHard Extreme Difficulty]] are entirely missing, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking some of the ingredents and recipes use outdated names and/or contain misspellings that have been fixed on the Steam version]].

** [[EvenBetterSequel Averted with the third game]], which most players agree improves and expands upon the previous two games in nearly every way, making it easily the best in the trilogy.

** The GuideDangIt example involving the Robbery chore. The minigame seems nearly impossible until one notices how the interface for this minigame works.

** [[EvenBetterSequel Averted with the third game]], which most players agree expands upon and improves from the second game in nearly every way, making it easily the best game in the trilogy.

** [[EvenBetterSequel Averted with the third game]], which most players agree expands upon and improves from the second game in nearly every way.

** Shish Kabobs have a special requirement that no two of any ingredient can touch one another. It requires a surprising amount of planning ahead, in a game that places a heavy emphasis on speed.

** In the sequel, Biggs Burger Shift 9. 11 prep stations, 8 holding stations, 90% Buzz, and an extremely short patience level with no side dishes to boost it mean you're in for quite the ride.[[note]]However, prior to a patch that increased the patience level, it was ten times worse; patience during rush hours was only ''one second'', putting players into a level of hell even worse than [[HarderThanHard Extreme Difficulty]] from the first game as orders and chores flew in and decayed faster than players could service them. This made earning the Burger Times achievement (which required a [[NoDamageRun Perfect Day]] on that particular shift) near impossible, whereas it's now still extremely difficult, but doable with some skill and proper planning.[[/note]]

* HilariousInHindsight: As mentioned under ShoutOut, one of the emails in the first game regards someone who's sick of waiting for "[[VideoGame/HalfLife HL3]]" to be released. Then the sequels reveal that the series takes place in the late 2030s-early 2040s. Poor guy's got every right to complain, considering he's been waiting for over ''thirty frickin' years''.

* ContestedSequel: While the vastly expanded food choices and the new Chef 4 Hire mode have received nearly universal praise, there is heated debate on whether the main restaurant mode is a worthy successor to the original game. Some enjoy the new version for being more streamlined with fewer distractions and gimmicks, whereas others feel it to be so stripped down in comparison to the original that there's no reason to play it over the more engaging, fleshed-out Chef 4 Hire.

* MostAnnoyingSound: In the sequel, the alarm bell that signals an incoming chore, especially when it gets late in a busy shift and each dish you serve has the potential to generate up to four chores at once.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: After many players criticized the lack of a sense of progression in ''[=CSD2=]]'', especially in comparison to the first game, ''[=CSD3=]'' has been revealed to have a fully fleshed-out campaign mode with a wide variety of progressive upgrades.

* HilariousInHindsight: As mentioned under ShoutOut, one of the emails in the first game regards someone who's sick of waiting for "[[VideoGame/HalfLife HL3]]" to be released. Then the sequel reveals that both games take place [[NextSundayAD sometime in the 2030s]] at the absolute earliest. Poor guy's got every right to complain, considering he's been waiting for around ''thirty frickin' years at least''.

** In the sequel, the sheer volume of chores one is assaulted with. It's not uncommon for the serving of a single order to generate up to ''four chores at once'', and because chores decay much faster than orders most of the time, shifts tend to devolve into "serve dish, fight off chores, serve dish, fight off chores, repeat ad nauseum", especially during rush hours. The biggest offenders, however, are the Trash and Dishes chores, since not only are they the most time-consuming, but they're also the most frequent of the lot, meaning that while you're dealing with them, orders or ''even other chores'' are slipping away before your eyes, and you may even have two trash or dishes chores queued up at the same time! On the whole, it ends up feeling like FakeDifficulty at its most blatant.

* BreatherLevel: In the sequel, Slammy's Old-Fashioned [=BBQ=] generally has easier shifts than other restaurants at similar levels, thanks to most of the foods being simple to prepare

* HilariousInHindsight: As mentioned under ShoutOut, one of the emails in the first game regards someone who's sick of waiting for "[[VideoGame/HalfLife HL3]]" to be released. Then the sequel reveals that both games take place sometime in the 2030s at the absolute earliest. Poor guy's got every right to complain, considering he's been waiting for around ''thirty frickin' years''.