Abra-Cooking-Dabra Review
Prep food for the citizens of Wonderland in the charming, cozy card-based cooking game Abra-Cooking-Dabra.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra. Credit: Door 407
Door 407, known for strategy titles like Diplomacy Is Not an Option and URBO, returns with Abra-Cooking-Dabra, a clever kitchen-management solitaire card game. It follows last year’s Sizzle & Stack in adapting Stacklands-style mechanics to a Cook, Serve, Delicious-like structure, but Abra-Cooking-Dabra’s stronger presentation and playful Wonderland theme make it a more enjoyable experience.
You're a chef planning a menu for a London restaurant. Running late and out of ideas, you click a suspicious email link promising to solve your problems and tumble into Wonderland, where the Cheshire Cat forces you to run a mobile café for the locals. Lewis Carroll's creatures line up, ravenously demanding increasingly complex orders while you juggle cards representing every part of your kitchen.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra. Credit: Door 407
Preparing food means combining cards across your increasingly overcrowded workspace. Place tomatoes on a knife card to slice them. Stack ingredients on a pan atop the stove to cook. Drag finished dishes to waiting customers before their patience runs out. Multi-stage recipes demand careful planning: egg on toast requires cooking eggs in one pan while toasting bread separately, then combining both on a plate. Managing overlapping timers for chopping, cooking, washing, and growing ingredients, while working with limited resources, creates the game’s central tension.
The campaign spans more than 25 levels, gradually introducing new mechanics like growing ingredients from seeds, using specialized tools such as whisks and graters, and fulfilling multi-dish orders. Between levels, you can purchase permanent kitchen upgrades, including extra appliance cards to improve efficiency, and you’ll occasionally earn upgrades that enhance existing cards with more speed.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra. Credit: Door 407
The challenge is relatively low. You can pause time freely to rearrange your cards, which feels necessary to avoid frustration but also removes much of the pressure. Ingredients arrive randomly in card packs; if you’re unlucky, you can sell unwanted cards with no downside. This safety net makes the randomness feel inconsequential, and I would have preferred the option to buy specific cards directly instead.
Some customers inflict timed negative effects, such as flipping random cards, obscuring their contents, freezing them, and more. These interruptions feel more annoying than challenging, as they’re random and difficult to plan around. All they did was try my patience. An option to disable these effects entirely would go a long way toward smoothing the experience.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra. Credit: Door 407
Abra-Cooking-Dabra looks great. The 3D cards feel genuinely tactile as you stack and move them around the table. Animations play directly on the cards as the items are cut, cooked, and washed. The customers, all Lewis Carroll creatures populating Wonderland, such as the Cheshire Cat, Toves, Mome Raths, Frog Footmen, and the like, are charmingly designed and add fun color to the game.
Though Abra-Cooking-Dabra doesn’t reinvent the card-based cooking genre, its charm and polish make it a pleasure to play. While it lacks teeth for players craving a real challenge, its theme and tactile playfeel make it easy to recommend over similar games.
Abra-Cooking-Dabra is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
