Base price: $24.
2 players.
Play time: 10 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 2 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Greasy Spoon was provided by New Mill Industries.

Do I bury the lede here too much? No idea, but I like using the space to give y’all a sense of what’s going on with me before I dive straight into the review. It makes the experience feel less transactional. I respect that you’re coming here to read stuff about games, so I want to offer you … something? in return? The best I can do is occasionally a little story or some complaints about dealing with airports, the heat, or who knows what else. Right now I’m just rewatching the Nintendo Direct and thinking about New Fire Emblem, so maybe I’ll have more to say about that in … September. Either way, let’s get into the game!

In Greasy Spoon, players are competing to send up orders in a diner! Only the best meal gets served, so, you know, you’re going to be going head-to-head a lot! As you do, cards will be removed from the game and you’ll draw new ones, so what you can cook with what you have is going to change turn-to-turn! So fire up the grill and maybe make a hot dog or some onion rings. Can you out-serve your opponent?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

This one’s pretty easy. Each player gets a deck:

Shuffle them up and draw 11 cards!

That’s about it! You’re good to go.

Gameplay

So Greasy Spoon is all about running out of cards! A game is made up of multiple rounds, where each player plays cards to try and build better meals for customers! The best meal wins the round and the winning player starts the next round.

To start a round, play any set of cards from your hand. A set can be one, two, or three cards!

A single card is a drink! It’s beaten by any higher-value drink.

Two cards is a side! There are a few. Rings are any two consecutive cards. Fries are any two cards of the same value. Fancy Rings and Fancy Fries are the same, but the cards have to be the same suit. Rings lose to Fries lose to Fancy Rings lose to Fancy Fries, and a higher-value pair beats a lower-value pair of the same type.

Three cards are where we get into meals! Hot Dogs are three consecutive cards, and Burgers are three cards of the same value. Like the sides, the Fancy versions of each have to have cards of the same suit / color. Hot Dogs lose to Burgers lose to Fancy Dogs lose to Fancy Burgers, and a higher-value triple beats a lower-value triple of the same type, like sides.

To go one step further, you can also do Combos! That’s any Meal and either a Side or a Drink! These are more complicated, and beating them is more complicated as well. To beat a Combo, you have to either beat the Meal (and then play any Side or Drink that matches the same number of cards as played previously) or match the Meal and then beat the Side or Drink with a better one (of the same number of cards)! That’s tricky, because a Meal + Drink can only be beaten with another Meal + Drink. You can’t use a Meal + Side Combo.

If you can’t beat the current-played set, you have to pass! You can also pass if you want. When you do, you can set up to three cards from your hand aside for later.

Either way, whenever you play cards or set them aside, immediately refill your hand to 11 cards from your deck. If you want, at any point, you can shuffle your set-aside cards back into your deck, as well! But you do have to do that once you run out of cards in your deck.

Once a player runs out of cards in their deck and hand, they win the game! You can play best of three or best of five, but once a player wins best of three or best of five, they win!

Player Count Differences

None here! This is a purely two-player game.

Strategy

• Don’t just play massive combos. While it’s good to get cards out of your hand and deck to try and win the game, you leave yourself vulnerable later in the game by burning high-value cards out of your play. You should save at least one big combo so that you can regain control of the initial card play later on, when you need it.
• I end up dumping as many cards of one color as I can when I pass. This lets me start saving up cards of a color for later. I usually try to get my deck down to one color towards the end so that it’s very easy to play combos. The key there is just not letting me get to that point in time.
• When I do need to eliminate a card or two of a color to free up my hand, I usually play a Combo. It’s a useful way to get rid of an extra card or two of a color you either don’t want to play or don’t have anything useful for. So, for instance, playing a Fancy Burger (Red) and a Drink (Yellow) lets you get rid of a yellow card that’s not helpful without having to compromise your combo.
• There’s nothing wrong with playing a low-value combo, especially if you can beat your opponent’s counter. You can use it to draw out an opponent’s mid-level counter, if you want, since then you can potentially beat it. Just be careful that you don’t give up play control.
• I don’t see a lot of point to playing just a drink by itself, unless you have no better option. It’s pretty easy to counter and explicitly counter (by playing a 6, which can’t be beaten). You should likely always be able to play a pair of some kind, based on some napkin math and the Pigeonhole Principle. That said, if you’re trying to get rid of just one six, you can do that. Just make sure you’re not just giving your opponent opportunities to store cards.
• Don’t limit yourself too much. If you get down to one card, for instance, your opponent can just keep playing pairs of cards and you won’t be able to respond to that. That usually means you’re going to lose the game.
• If you start passing a lot, make sure you’re dumping cards. If you’re not dumping cards each turn, then you’re just stuck with the same hand over and over. You can’t use that to necessarily change your situation if your opponent keeps playing combos you can’t respond to (like Fancy Burgers). Discarding cards lets you move cards that aren’t working out of your hand (or set up other cards).

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I like the theme a lot! Burger joints are a pleasant and fun theme, and I don’t see enough of them. I’m aware that Food Chain Magnate exists, but it’s so far beyond my preferred game complexity threshold that I get stressed whenever I look at it. I think the closest game in my collection is Burger Up? Been a while since I’ve played that, though.
• The art style is simple, but pleasant. I like that it’s vaguely pixellated.
• Very easy game to transport, which I also appreciate. The tiny card games are the best, especially if you have dedicated storage like a Quiver or something. You can bundle up a bunch of them and take them with you.
• Two-player shedding games are a little less common, which neat. Usually you want a few more people, but this one’s designed to be played 1v1, which is nice. The one caveat is that you can get pinned down if you’re not careful.
• I appreciate that they have a list of card play options on the back of the rulebook, but having a second one so both players could have one would be nice. You can place it between the players, but then it’s not extremely easy to read. Just giving each player a reference card would be nice, but I’m glad there’s at least one handy reference outside of the rulebook.

Mehs

• This is more of a New Mill-level gripe, but I do feel like having nothing on the back of the box is a waste of potentially valuable space. I get that you order the games online and so there’s not necessarily a need for it, but having some information on the back of the box, especially things like expected playtime, are nice. Plus, if you’re a shop selling the game or something, it’s good to have something that customers can read about. It’s less a problem with this game specifically, but it’s still an issue.
• The arbitrary choice of playing “best of three” or “best of five” means little to me. I get that it kind of lets you choose how long you want your play to be, but it’s not like there’s any impact between one game and the subsequent game. It’s largely “fine”, but if you’ve read these reviews before, it’s not my favorite thing.
• Everything is a little small. The rulebook, the corner numbers, the menu on the back; if everything were a little larger, I wouldn’t mind.

Cons

• I think the game’s emphasis on its own terminology can make things harder to learn, especially for new players. The Drinks / Sides / Mains / Combos distinctions can make things confusing, especially when it comes to how to beat an opponent’s play. Usually you can just beat a play with a better play in the same category, but for Combos, you have to either beat the main or match the main and then beat the other part of the combo. That can be pretty confusing, but it’s even worse if you’re learning the game from jump and you have to balance that against shedding-specific terms (my co-player was having trouble remembering that rank and suit correspond to number and color, which, fair; I think I sometimes forget that some gamers aren’t as entrenched in all this vocabulary as we are.

Overall: 7.75 / 10

Overall, I think Greasy Spoon is a lot of fun! I wasn’t sure after the first game while we were figuring out the flow and terminology. It’s a bit just getting everything to fit together, and for a small card game, that confusion can certainly be a turn-off. I’d recommend sticking with it though! I get why the choice was made for thematic reasons. Having everything make a cohesive menu makes the game feel like it’s part of a complete idea rather than a game that just participates in the trappings of its theme. I like that, but I can definitely understand why it makes the game frustrating to learn (and we struggled, as I mentioned). Beyond that, though, Greasy Spoon is a really interesting two-player ladder-climbing and shedding game, where the major critical point is that it’s pretty tactical. You can’t just overwhelm your opponent with options; there are explicit ceilings for the number of cards you can play, and playing them now means that you may not get the chance to play them later. Waiting too long to play them may mean you don’t get the chance at all! So planning and responsiveness are key, which makes the game interesting and exciting for two as you adapt to each others’ playstyles and start to change it up based on what your opponent does from game to game. The art is very pleasant, as well, though it does make me hungry for a burger, despite it being pixellated. I think the game appeals more to advanced card game players than casual ones, though, which does make sense and is pretty firmly in New Mill’s audience. I would struggle to teach this to folks newer to ladder-climbing, and I don’t think the game particularly concerns itself with smoothing out that learning curve. If you’re thrilled by the prospect, you enjoy some tactical card play, or you just dream of eating a pixellated burger, Greasy Spoon will probably be what you’re looking for! I quite enjoyed it.

For more great card game recommendations, check out my Card Games Hub!

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