Pao Pao Recipes: Every Dish, Ingredient and Unlock

Every dish in Pao Pao is a fixed set of ingredients, and each ingredient has to be prepped a specific way before it goes on the plate. You start with 5 recipes. Earn restaurant stars to unlock most of the others, and pick up the rest from a quest, the town’s Informant and the Magic Cauldron event. There are 46 dishes and 9 cakes to collect.

How to Read the Recipe Tables

Each ingredient lists its prep in brackets. Carp (sliced, mixed, baked) means you cut the carp at the Prep Table, mix it in the Mixer and bake it in the Oven before plating. An ingredient with nothing in brackets, like Nori, goes on the plate as it is.

Each prep step happens at one station:

The Stations column lists every station a dish needs. Check it before you put a recipe on your daily menu. If your kitchen is missing a station, the game warns you before you open, but it won’t stop you.

Coins and Rating are listed as Perfect / Good / Normal. Those are the three serving grades, explained below.

How Serving Speed Affects Your Pay

Every order starts a timer split into three windows. Serve inside the first window for a Perfect grade, the second for Good and the last for Normal. Once the timer runs out, the order pays nothing.

Most dishes give you 40 seconds for Perfect, 20 for Good and 40 for Normal. Rice Roll is faster: you have 20 seconds for Perfect, then 30 for Good and only 10 for Normal. It pays 41 coins at Perfect against 34 at Normal.

Rating depends on the dish. Simple plates like Bass Roast, Carp Sashimi and Catfish Sashimi add 15 rating at Perfect, 10 at Good and 5 at Normal. The most involved dishes, such as Baked Pike, Corn Pie and Deep-Fried Bass with Noodles, add 30 / 25 / 20. Every restaurant star needs a total rating, so once you can cook a few multi-step dishes, put them on the menu to reach your next star sooner. Even a Normal serve of one of those (20) beats a Perfect serve of a simple plate (15).

These dishes use a different timer:

If you want the most coins per order, these pay the most at Perfect: Mango Cheese Pie (445), Tofu Wok (341), Corn Pie (265), Carrot Salad with Halibut (259), Fruit Salad (250).

All Dishes

Cakes

Cakes are put together at the Pastry Table and don’t appear as restaurant orders, so they have no coin payout. All 9 unlock together when you earn Star 2. Each one uses Cake Mix plus one main ingredient.

How to Unlock Recipes

Starting Recipes

You already know Catfish Sashimi, Catfish with Vegetables, Noodles with Salmon, Rice Roll, Spring Salad when you take over the restaurant.

Quest and Informant Rewards

Nancy’s quest The Fastest Mail in Town asks you to deliver her letter to Croc. Hand it over to learn Salmon Sashimi and Carp Sashimi and get a fishing rod. Salmon Sashimi also comes with Star 1, so you’ll have it early either way.

The newspaper seller, known as the Informant, sells one piece of gossip a day for 300 coins. Your first purchase is a tip about Croc’s cooking, and it teaches you Carp Roll. After that, each purchase has a 20% chance to teach you one of these recipes you haven’t learned from him yet: Eel Noodles, Pike Sashimi, Salmon Dumplings, Spicy Rice with Catfish, Tuna Sashimi. The rest of the time you just get gossip. Once he has taught you all 5, his tips stop including recipes. On average it takes about 25 purchases (around 7,500 coins) to collect all 5, so treat it as a daily habit once your restaurant earns well.

Restaurant Stars

Each restaurant star unlocks a batch of recipes along with a coin reward:

• Star 1: Diner (500 coins): Baked Eel with Vegetables, Baked Pike, Halibut and Rice Delicacy, Salmon Sashimi, Spicy Catfish Salad, Tuna Roll
• Star 2: Eatery (1,000 coins): Apple Pie, Bass Roast, Crab Casserole, Vegetable Dumplings, plus all 9 cakes
• Star 3: Canteen (1,500 coins): Bass Roll, Eel Strips, Fried Catfish, Miso Soup, Tilapia Dumplings
• Star 4: Snack Bar (2,000 coins): Deep-Fried Bass with Noodles, Pumpkin Casserole, Salmon Dumplings, Salmon Nuggets, Tom Yum Soup
• Star 5: Cafe (3,500 coins): Fish Pho, Nasi Goreng, Pad Thai, Spicy Apple Bass, Tofu Wok
• Star 6: Bistro (4,000 coins): Banana Pie, Carrot Salad with Halibut, Corn Pie, Fruit Salad, Mango Cheese Pie

Magic Cauldron

Once you have 4 stars, the Magic Cauldron event appears every Friday in the forest to the east, near the train station. The tables around it hold ingredients. Toss a recipe’s full set of ingredients into the cauldron to learn it. The cauldron only teaches these 5 recipes, and only ones you don’t know yet: