Boxing clever: meal-kit deliveries offer the promise of home-cooked food

Natasha Robinson
FEBRUARY 03, 2015
THE AUSTRALIAN
Spiced roast pork with smoky eggplant and pomegranate salad from The Cook’s Grocer.Spiced roast pork with smoky eggplant and pomegranate salad from The Cook’s Grocer. Source: Supplied < PrevNext >
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FOR working parents, singles who can’t stand the idea of recipe planning and tedious shopping trips, or those whose cooking skills linger around boiled-egg competency, meal-kit deliveries can offer the promise of home-cooked food whatever your circumstances.
From the stalwart of meal delivery, the Gourmet Dinner Service, which provides homely and healthy pre-cooked dinners, the meal delivery trend has progressed (or regressed, depending on your attitude to cooking) towards services that offer all the ingredients for a meal that you cook yourself.
Recipe and ingredient-delivery subscription service HelloFresh has firmly established itself in the Australian market during the past 18 months after a massive marketing campaign (another plastic card promising $30 off, anyone?) after launching in 2012 in Britain. It’s essentially online shopping taken a large step further, pitched as a healthy alternative to the TV dinner that gives the cooking skills a guided workout, too.
But there are plenty of local and small-business options that provide more flexibility than HelloFresh in terms of recipe choice: we tried one of them, The Cook’s Grocer, based in Rozelle in Sydney’s inner-west. Take a look at how it measures up against the HelloFresh phenomenon.
Is it really worth having a meal delivered if you still have to cook it all yourself? How much time and convenience does it really save if you have to provide condiments? And, of course, you’ll still have to head to the shops to stock up on staples such as milk and on ingredients for the week’s less glamorous meals.
You might think ready-cooked options such as the Gourmet Dinner Service have been doing it right for years: no shopping OR cooking required.
HELLO FRESH
The brainchild of British corporate lawyer turned chef Patrick Drake, this is the best known of the dinner-kit subscription companies that have taken online shopping a giant leap further. Once a week a food parcel is delivered that contains most of the ingredients, minus a few condiments, for meals outlined on recipe cards that change each week. Advertised as “Everything but the chef!”, HelloFresh prides itself on locally sourced, high-quality fresh ingredients that arrive in perfect quantities for reducing wastage.
Delivery area: Most suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, and Brisbane. Also the central coast, southern highlands, Wollongong and Newcastle regions in NSW, with plans to expand further.
Price: Classic box (three meals to feed two meat and fish-eaters) $69. Five-meal Classic box, $109. Vego box of three meals for two people, $64; fruit boxes $24-$65.
What we cooked: Spiced snapper with Asian-style potato salad, Korean beef bulgogi, caramelised eschalot risotto with parmesan.
What we liked: The meat and fish were of fantastic quality, the snapper in particular infinitely better than anything you could buy in a supermarket. People who are keen on monitoring portion control will be happy with the serving sizes. The recipes were simple to follow, creative, flavoursome and healthy. There was a good mix of meat, fish and one vegetarian option throughout the three days. The delivery window on ordering is seven hours, but the company takes the trouble to email you on the morning of delivery to narrow down the arrival time to within two hours. Otherwise you can ask for your ice-packed delivery to be left at your door.
What we disliked: The recipes are hit-and-miss in terms of convenience. Risotto, for instance, is not an ideal option for the time-poor. The exclusion of basic condiments makes sense, but you have to be fairly organised to ensure you have things such as sesame oil in the pantry, so you could find yourself in need of a trip to the shops anyway.
hellofresh.com.au
THE COOK’S GROCER
What this Sydney service lacks in national reach it makes up for in quality and, it has to be said, style. From the tasteful shopfront in inner-west Rozelle to the gorgeousness of the finished dishes, The Cook’s Grocer delivers a feast for the eyes.
The business, owned and run by Tim Ryder (pictured) and Liz Master, has hit on a winning formula: top-notch organic produce; healthy, restaurant-quality dishes, most designed to take no more than 30 minutes to prepare; and ingredients carefully measured out and packaged for each meal, reducing food waste to virtually zero.
The menu changes monthly and it’s nice to be able to drop by the shop and check out what’s in the fridge, but for those who live further afield, meals can be ordered online and they deliver three times a week (minimum order $60; $7.50 a delivery; free delivery for orders over $150).
Delivery area: Sydney.
Price: Three pack sizes range from two serves ($24-$38) to four ($42-$69). Specials such as the three-course Mexican Summer BBQ, $155 for four people. Subscriber four-dinner pack for two, $115.
What we cooked: Grilled lemon chicken with orange, asparagus and quinoa; grilled beef and summer pea salad.
What we liked: A great range of dishes. The organic ingredients were amazing quality and super-fresh (seasonal produce is sourced from the markets on delivery day). No pantry surprises: you need to provide only salt, pepper and olive oil. The recipes were easy to follow and the result looked almost as impressive as in the picture (even the chicken dish, rustled up in the wake of a weekend-away cocktail hour). Recipes come with a calorie count and degree of difficulty, and although none is very tricky there’s enough to do, including trimming vegetables, to satisfy the cooking urge.
What we disliked: You may need to use your own judgment on some quantities. We used about two-thirds of the red onion supplied for the absolutely delicious beef salad, and it was still too much.
thecooksgrocer.com.au
Cathy Osmond
GOURMET DINNER SERVICE
At 21 years old, this is the veteran of the Australian home-delivery meals business. So it must be doing something right. Unlike HelloFresh and other meal-kit services, GDS’s main game is in pre-cooked, frozen meals ready to pop in the oven or microwave; however, several dishes — and their vegie sides — require cooking and are marked thus on the order form on the website. Simple cooking or heating instructions are on the packaging.
Delivery area: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra and coastal cities of NSW and Queensland.
Price: Three meals for two people costs about $99 plus $8.50 delivery. Minimum order $50.
What we cooked: Riverina lamb rump with sweet potato mash and seasonal vegetables; chicken pomodoro with fresh spinach and roast garlic mash and broccoli; salmon teriyaki with Asian noodles and green vegetables.
What we liked: If you’re ordering in haste, the three Dinner for 2 menu options save trawling through the list of individual dishes. Plus you can add on cocktail food, desserts and so on. Of the dishes we tried, all the mains (lamb, salmon, chicken) were of high standard and made with decent ingredients. The marinated lamb required only a quick sear on the stovetop followed by 15 minutes in the oven, as per the instructions on the plastic packaging. Pre-cut and separately packaged raw vegies, ready to cook — broccoli, beans, snowpeas and carrots, with a sprinkling of rosemary — were conspicuously fresh (the convenience of pre-cut veg is offset, in our opinion, by a twinge of guilt about the idea, but then this applies to most home-meal services). The salted caramel tarts to follow were terrific, especially when we added our own cream.
What we disliked: Two of the three sides weren’t up to the standard of the meat dishes. The roast garlic mash was watery and the flavour not great; Asian noodles were overly sweet and rather stodgy. (The sweet potato mash, on the other hand, was exemplary, with good flavour.)
gourmetdinnerservice.com.au