allysonkrieger
runonsentence.com
amkrieger@hotmail.com
650 703 7109
originally published on WildWeb, 4/27/99
Playing
With Your Food
Ordering Tasty Treats Online
By
ALLYSON KRIEGER / In my dream, I'm wearing my oldest, softest, comfiest
T-shirt. I'm sitting in an overstuffed velvet chair, my legs tucked under
me, my favorite "Seinfeld" playing on TV. In my dream, a perfectly
coifed butler lifts the cover of a silver-domed platter with a white-gloved
hand to reveal the meal to end all meals. I don't have to shop, I don't
have to peel vegetables, I don't have to cook and I most certainly don't
have to wash dishes.
Such is the
concept behind cookexpress.com, a San Francisco-based company that began
offering gourmet delights online earlier this year. (ed: now defunct)
OK, so cookexpress.com won't scour those dirty plates for you, but it
will ship a cornucopia of custom-made "Mealkits" directly to
your door, almost anywhere in the United States.
Cookexpress.com
boasts "the finest ingredients," "everything-at-your-fingertips"
convenience and guaranteed satisfaction -- and the meals truly do look
amazing. Food descriptions read like your typical West Coast eatery: featured
chef Joanne Weir's Roasted Salmon comes with Warm Potato-Olive Salad,
Baby Arugula and Herb-Caper Sauce. The site itself is warm, inviting and
clearly organized into seven main categories. Cookexpress.com manages
to add unique benefits to ordering food online, like the "About the
Food" page, which is useful if you want to know exactly where all
the ingredients are from. When's the last time your local seafood joint
did that? The site also offers instant online help, weekdays until 8 p.m.
My own question about delivery time was promptly answered by the ever-friendly
"Eleanor."
So, I decided to try it. Once I got over my initial reservations (Did it cost to much? Is the food fresh? Will the FedEx guy take a bite?), the satisfaction of knowing I wouldn't have to cook tomorrow -- and I'd have a smashing dinner -- was a joy. The ordering process was smooth and easy, and a selection of only five Mealkits is a blessing for a master of indecision like myself. The food arrived, as Eleanor promised, before 3 p.m. the day after I ordered it.
For presentation -- and I'm just talkin' packaging here -- cookexpress.com gets an A. My Mealkit (I chose the aforementioned salmon) came packaged in a sleek white Styrofoam basket, garnished with silver icy freeze packs and accompanied by a hand-signed note of thanks from the founder. The ingredients are divided into lettered packages and the instructions fall into manageable steps based on the letters. Cooking the meal was a little bit more work than I would've liked, but pales in comparison to creating everything from scratch. After about 30 minutes of light prep time, the dishes were ready.
And the stomach says? The selection I ordered from cookexpress.com made for an excellent meal. The flavors were well-balanced, the fish was fresh and the portions modest. The best part was probably the herb sauce, which was way outside my own culinary range. The greens (arugula, in this case) snapped to attention and the potatoes were savory. Overall, not something I would order on a daily basis (see "pricey," below), but a great first-date dinner or occasional splurge.
There are a few bones to pick with cookexpress.com. First and most obvious: The meals are pricey. This month's menu ranges from B. Smith's Caribbean Jerk Chicken at $9 per serving to the high-end $16-per-serving Omaha Steaks Filet Mignon au Poivre. Each entrée is accompanied by side dishes (cooked pigeon peas, long grain white rice, collard greens and mango chutney for the chicken; haricot verts, garlic mashed potatoes, roast shallot compote and roasted mushrooms for the filet), and once you multiply by two and figure in shipping, the total is displayed. You also can't order only one serving of a meal, so if you're dining for two, it's not exactly like being at a restaurant since you both get the same thing.
Though my order came to a grand total of $42.95 (and I still have to provide my own wine), the unique and kitschy experience of ordering "gourmet" meals through my decidedly un-gourmet PC was kinda fun. The best use of cookexpress.com -- if you're not infinitely wealthy of course -- is as a gift, or a "special occasion," like having your new beau over for dinner before he knows you can't cook.
If you like the idea of ordering food via the Web but prefer preparing your own meals, check out virtual grocery stores like streamline.com, peapod.com and netgrocer.com. These sites generally offer home delivery at a flat rate and provide a wide range of selection. Somewhere, some way, somehow, some Web site has the goods to fill your gullet.
Other sites
for food lovers:
Steak Central
Gourmet Magazine
Shoemaker's Candies
The Best of French Cheeses
The Homesick Gourmet
Brits Abroad
Lobsters Online
WildWeb TV Show | October 04, 1999