Can VR Teach Cooking IN REAL LIFE? – Lost Recipes Review (Quest 2)

Lost Recipes is a new VR cooking simulator, and for this Lost Recipes review I didn’t stop at the game. I picked one recipe, cooked it in VR, then cooked it in real life exactly as the game taught me, to see what it actually tastes like and whether I’d poison my wife.

Schell Games sponsored this video and paid for the food. They had no say in my review.

What Lost Recipes is

Lost Recipes is the newest historical cooking game from Schell Games. You might know the studio from I Expect You To Die and Until You Fall, and they’re also working on the Among Us VR port. This one is very different.

The idea is to keep traditional recipes alive by teaching you the favourite dishes of three ancient civilisations: Greek, Chinese and Mayan. You travel back in time and cook in historically accurate kitchens, with authentic ingredients, utensils and techniques, and native voice actors who teach you about their cultures. It’s all meant to be relaxing and fun.

It came out on 27 January 2022, exclusively on Quest, for 15 US dollars.

Cooking a steamed whole fish in VR

I picked the Chinese New Year steamed whole fish, one of the more difficult ones. In Chinese, the words for fish and extra sound the same, so it’s tradition to leave some fish uneaten as a symbol of having extra savings at the end of the year. I was born and raised in the Netherlands, so I never learned much of the traditional side, and I loved learning it here.

The recipe, as the game teaches it:

1. Dice the scallion with the knife and spread it over the platter. Lots of little pieces cook evenly and add texture.
2. Put the fish on top and sprinkle one spoon of salt over it.
3. Julienne the ginger (cut it into matchstick-sized pieces) and cover the fish with it.
4. Drizzle wine over the fish.
5. Add wood and start a hot fire under the left wok, put in two scoops of water, place the plate with the fish in the wok and cover it with the lid to steam.
6. Start a fire under the right wok for the sauce: two scoops of water and equal parts soy sauce, sesame oil and wine, then all of the rock sugar and two spoons of white pepper. Bring it to a boil.
7. Take out the steamed fish, pour a full ladle of sauce over it and garnish.

This is where the multitasking starts. I mixed up the oil and the wine for a moment and wasn’t sure I’d added the soy sauce. Still, it felt like I was really learning a recipe, and I liked that they use authentic recipes and voices from the region. My dad taught me a version of this dish, but the game’s version uses far more ingredients. He never told me about the cilantro.

My customer liked it: four stars and a successful New Year steamed whole fish. I’ve never had five stars. Her comment was that she’d hoped for more cilantro, maybe next time.

Cooking it in real life

Then I took what I’d learned in VR and cooked the exact recipe for Chary and me. We went grocery shopping, found the Shaoxing cooking wine (I was so happy we found it) and added some vegetables so it could be our dinner.

A few changes:

• We don’t have a steamer for a wok, so I steamed the fish in our multi-cooker.
• I went easier on the salt.
• Two scoops of the sauce mix felt like way too much, so I made less.
• The game wanted about six pieces of rock sugar. I used one huge piece.

I’m not a great cook. I’m okay, and still learning. But it smelled like a lot of love, not fishy at all, a little sweet. The sauce was strong, and Chary liked the texture of the fish. She rated it 8.5 out of 10 and called it a success.

Lost Recipes review: did it teach me to cook?

Sort of. One thing surprised me: because I’d been in VR and physically done the steps, I memorised the recipe much more easily. That’s the power of VR.

What I liked:

• A good pace, nice environments, and it’s comfortable to play.
• Enough game physics to make it entertaining and immersive, so cooking never felt like a drag (in real life I kind of think it is).
• Learning was fun, which is the developers’ goal: they hope you actually make these dishes.
• There’s a recipe book made for the game. Some recipes are adjusted for today, because some in-game methods and ingredients aren’t available anymore. Knowing the recipes are real adds extra value.
• As someone who is half Chinese, the Asian recipes and the stories behind them really resonated with me and felt authentic. You can tell they researched all three cultures.

What could be better:

• It doesn’t teach you the basics of cooking, so you’ll need some experience of your own. Too bad I only found the recipe book after I’d made the dish.
• There are three recipes per culture. I finished all nine in about two hours, which isn’t a lot for 15 dollars, and it ended abruptly.
• It’s easy. I got four stars even with my mistakes. You can replay for five stars, but punishing mistakes a bit more would make going for five stars more rewarding. Then again, the developers wanted a relaxing learning experience.
• There are multiple ways to do things, so exploring gets you more time out of it.

Is Lost Recipes worth it?

I wanted more, and that means I enjoyed what I played. I really hope the developers add more recipes, because that would give it more value for its money when everything else is this fun. They said more may come depending on how people like the game, so if you do, let them know. If you want a relaxed, authentic cooking game that might actually get you into the kitchen, it’s a lovely one. You can find it on the Lost Recipes site.