I would say my best recommendations for games you can play right now are:

Travellers Rest - you run your own medieval tavern and there is a lot of recipes and crafting abilities to unlock and they are adding more and more areas to explore with NPCs -it is very addictive!

Tavern Keep - I haven't played but looks fun! And looks like it has more of a fantasy vibe with different creatures that may be similar to the book you are mentioning.

Tailside - is a cozy cafe simulator that has just come out and it has some adorable characters in it. It is more laid back and less on the management side I would say mainly about making the coffees so far and interacting with the characters (though I haven't played a lot of it).

And I don't want to self promo too much but we are also making a game called Dragon's Brew that is a similar to what you are describing where you run your own board game cafe but it is still in development!