Fanon:Cooke family (SimVille)

The Cooke family is a Maxis-created family in SimVille. It consists of Julien Cooke, who started a restaurant in the town after losing his prize-winning recipe to Zebest Quizine.

Original MTS post
The following was posted to ModTheSims on April 9, 2018. The original post can be found here.

Cooking for the Cookes

A lot of people really hate the premade family bin families and wish them to their graves with satellites falling onto their heads "by accident"... or just use empty stealth hood templates to prevent them from coming back. I, however, don't really mind them, and in fact I like to integrate them into my hoods in one way or another. I have moved in all the premade bin families except for the Critturs and the Larsons. Perhaps I'll move those in someday.

Today we'll start with the Cooke family and its one and only member: Julien Cooke.



After having his potentially prize-winning recipe stolen by his rival, Zebest Quizine, Julien decided to cut his ties and find a new place to create culinary delights.

And he certainly did! Julien Cooke moved to SimVille not long after the borders expanded west across the New Guinea bridge and the new developments started going up like mushrooms after the rain. He moved into an apartment, quit his job, and bought an empty lot just south of the FreeTime Recreation Center, where he established his own restaurant. We will cover the restaurant some other time. For now, let's see how well Julien has settled into my hood.

Julien Cooke



After having his wonderful recipe stolen by his rival, Zebest Quizine, Julien decided to start anew. Will his new life lead him to more culinary creations?

Julien upped his cooking game after arriving in SimVille. Before he founded his new restaurant, he practiced making all sorts of different recipes in the privacy of his apartment kitchen. Numerous cooking fires, countless smoking dishes, and lots of gunk stuck on the walls and counters didn't stop him from eventually maxing out his cooking skill. He then founded Cooke's Place and quit his old job, but realized quickly that he couldn't tend to the stove and perform his other managerial duties at the same time. Julien took out a significant loan from the bank in order to help make his establishment grow—and to hire another chef that he could pass the turner to when he needed to be elsewhere. He's working as hard as ever to rake in the money to pay the loan off... but his restaurant has been doing well. If only Zebest Quizine was here to be humiliated!



The house

Julien currently lives in the Walk-Up Apartments, which is a modified version of the Walkup Apartments download on MTS.





It looks like a nice lot—and it is—but there are still some quirks and problems here and there that kinda irk me out. Perhaps someday in the future I'll get around to fixing them. For now, though, the lot is at least functional. The lot is perhaps best known for the street-level shops at its base, with apartments built on top of them. These communal areas come to life with the apartments and shopping on the same lot mod, and it's really quite a lovely, convenient lot to live on indeed.



On the left side of the lot is a convenience store that sells groceries, magazines, clothes, and video games.









In the middle of the lot is a small restaurant.









And boy, is this probably the worst restaurant in SimVille. I should probably get around to fixing this awkwardly placed chair...



...or this accursed sign that prevents the door from closing (Yeah, looks like Pescado's Door Jam Fix mod didn't work in this case).



On the right side is a little arcade that also suffers from the "door stuck open due to sign" issue.









There are also random fruit trees and random empty garden plots which I should probably consider removing...



...and this random sad monkey bars set.



The actual apartments themselves, though, aren't that bad, so the tenants aren't complaining too much. Julien Cooke has a small apartment in the middle, but he's single, so he lives quite comfortably in here, actually.















Julien chose Family as his secondary aspiration, not because he's actually interested in having kids, but because he wants to be able to prepare savoury Grandma's Comfort Soup right at home. Warms him down to his toes.





Mmm... heavenly...



A brief glimpse in the life of Julien Cooke

6am on one stormy, Saturday morning...



Julien's hungry for breakfast, but not for silly toaster pastries. He's up for a little challenge this weekend.











One of the best parts about cooking is that you get to eat what you've produced and satisfy one of your daily needs at the same time.



Every good cook must also clean up after themselves.





Even though it's a Saturday and restaurants tend to be pretty busy on weekends, Julien decides he desperately needs a day off. He's been working at his restaurant fourteen hours a day every day for the past three weeks or so, and he'd quite like a day to just rest and relax. He fills himself a mug of coffee and sits on his balcony watching the rain come down.



It's a Saturday, so the landlord (Nawwaf Mace), as usual, is hosting his weekly Saturday building party. Julien shudders at the thought of the quality of the landlord's burgers and sets about making his own culinary treat.







His cell phone goes off during the roasting process, but Julien knows better than to answer it!



Salmon! He places it out for the other tenants to enjoy. Hopefully they'll choose his dish over the burgers. He has lunch settled for today!



Obedient restaurant server cleans up the dirty dishes automatically!



"I've done more than fry eggs, Waylon! I practically make eggs fry themselves!"



Are you kidding me... they chose the RESTAURANT over Julien's cooking?!?! Julien can't help but feel a bit pissed on the inside.



There's only one thing the good business owner must do: sabotage!



Obedient server mops it up.



Obedient server gets sprayed and is trained not to react.



Landlord mops it up but doesn't fix it.



Julien bails to the convenience store and stares at clothes, looking totally innocent.



Landlord takes to annoying his tenants instead.



No one is in charge of tending to the fruit trees in the communal area. The fruit is of disgustingly low quality, but Julien thinks he can sell some of the lemons. He made 64 Simoleons. Yeah, Amar definitely was not the one who bought from him.



Julien has succeeded in disrupting business!



He plays some A-maz-ing Matey! while the server next door mops up those puddles indefinitely.



He makes himself some Grandma's Comfort Soup to end the day.











The salmon Julien prepared earlier today has spoiled. The server in the restaurant is far too busy mopping up the puddles to throw it out.



She finally manages to mop up that gigantic mess and is able to retrieve that dirty dish outside.





Some bedtime stories.



Then bedtime.



Conclusion

Julien Cooke has come a long way on his culinary career, but he still has a lot of road ahead of him. His restaurant is doing well for now, but it's facing pretty intense competition from all of the other restaurants in town, and Julien's working as hard as ever to try to keep his business above all the others. How long will he be able to do this for? And is burnout just around the corner for him?

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more!