Restaurant City's magical new recipes: Chocolate Toads & Butternut Squash

As we told you earlier today, this week's weekly theme in Playfish's Restaurant City is "Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem." The theme is a blatant nod to the Harry Potter line of books and movies, and in a typical move for the game, the theme's menu items have hit players' menus a bit in advance of the decorative items themselves.

The two new recipes are the Chocolate Toads dessert dish, and the Butternut Squash drink item (think a squash puree). As for the Chocolate Toads, you can learn this recipe by having one Chocolate, one Milk, and one Mint ingredient. The Butternut Squash recipe, then, interestingly requires one Soda, one Ice Cream, and one Butter.

Neither of these dishes are labeled as only being available for a limited time, which, along with the fact that they are buried quite deeply within their respective sections of the menu (limited dishes tend to show up first in line), leads us to believe that they are permanent additions to the game. Still, it couldn't hurt to learn these dishes now, even if you don't master them right away, just to make sure you have them for future use in your catalog.

Cast a spell with new Restaurant City decorative items

While Playfish might have initially claimed that the new Harry Potter "Magic, Mystery & Mayhem" items would be launching in Restaurant City on Thursday, it appears that some lucky chefs are already getting their hands on the items in the theme, as the game updated just a few minutes ago to launch them in the store.

The theme contains all of the items you'll need to create both a magically themed restaurant, but also give off the feeling of walking into Hogwarts, with wooden school benches and desks, a blackboard, globe, and a school dining table, along with all sorts of decorative items, like giant spiders, potion bottles and racks, castle pillars, arches, and other architectural details. You can even purchase a Floating Car or a quartet of Floating Candles to really add the feeling of magical amazement to your restaurant.

What makes the theme so blatantly Harry Potter-oriented are the two figures available to purchase from the Decorations portion of the store - Ham-oniony and Harry Butter, who are clearly molded after Hermione and Harry from the insanely popular series. It makes sense that Playfish would go down this route, especially right now, as the newest film in the series will be released later this month in the US.

For now, if you'd like to add a magical flair to your restaurant, be sure to pick up these items while they are easily available in the game's store. Also, for a larger look at all of the available items, check out the official Restaurant City blog.