It is not easy to have a lunch prepared for work everyday, but yet you don’t always have time to go out for lunch. On such days, you can get them delivered, but if you want to think about healthy and tasty meal, the option might be limited… But this is NYC, the city where anything is possible! I discovered a food delivery company called CookUnity, who offers Artisan food made by Artisan chefs. That’s right, not something that is mass-produced or some unhealthy fast food item. A dish that is prepared for you, and only you at the time of order. Still, it is a “food delivery” company so I was skeptical…I was not really sure about food quality, since it is not like getting the food delivered from your favorite restaurant. But I got a deal to try their service for almost nothing, so I said let’s try them out!

CookUnity have a really nice website that shows great photos of the food items. It also had information on nutrition, ingredients, the chef who made it and some other details. They source “real” ingredients from trusted farms, and they use NY independent chefs to cook their special dishes. They have quite nice variety of dishes, including Vegetarian, Vegan, Paleo, and Dairy Free. You can also see the ratings for each dishes, so you know what the customers thought of the dishes before you order.

With good amount of credit amount we received, we got to try several different kind of dishes from CookUnity. The available dishes are different based on where you want the meal to be delivered. The chefs who are in your deliverable area will be coming up with a menu each day. It is fun to see what they got going on for that day. First up was Parmesan Crusted Salmon ($16) made by chef Francesco Peluffo. Each meal comes with compostable and recyclable packaging, microwave and oven safe container, a side dish, and what’s more, a surprise cookie! You can opt out of the cookie if you don’t want it. You can also request utensils and they will include plastic ware for free.

It is a good sized amount of food, especially with the side dish. Some dishes have less portion of some items, according to reviews written by other customers. This one, I think the size of salmon was pretty darn good. It had veggie orzo on the bottom, and lots of it.

It came with citrus sauce and roasted broccoli as the side dish. There is no choice on the side dish, but each dish clearly states what side dish it comes with, so you know before you order.

 

The dishes are delivered chilled, so you can heat them up when you are ready to eat them. There is a clear instruction of how to heat up the dish, and if you follow it, you should have a perfectly prepared meal. One thing I learned by reading customer reviews of some dishes from CookUnity is that the sauce that comes with some dishes could be quite strong and overwhelming. So, even if the instruction tells you to pure the sauce all over your dish, you should taste the sauce first and then decide if you want to do that or not. In this case, the citrus sauce was very powerful, so we didn’t pour all over on the salmon. That was the right call, as it would have over powered the flavor of the salmon. The salmon was very tasty, juicy and flaky, wonderful Parmesan flavor. The orzo was really yummy too. A little bit of citrus sauce added refreshing flavor and enhanced the salmon flavor. The sweet and mild flavor and acidic flavor were well balanced together, high quality and excellent dish!

Next up was Chimichurri Flank Steak ($16) by chef Chris Ratel. It comes with roasted red pepper, tomato and couscous. I also ordered Almond Croissant ($4) by Las Delicias Patisserie. The great thing about them is that on top of meals, they also offer appetizers & soups, artisanal drinks, and homemade sweet treats.

Almond Croissant was a very hard item to get, it seems like super popular. From my experience, it sold out within few minutes of it being offered on the website. I was so happy when I finally got to grab one! This thing was HUGE and heavy. And what I didn’t know was that the almond croissant uses frangipane made from scratch with local eggs and butter. The frangipane was super-duper awesome, a symphony to my mouth! No wonder this thing gets sold out within minutes every day. Flaky and fluffy, light yet rich and satisfying. Delicious!

This one also was a really nice portion. It had four strips of steaks, sitting on top of a bed of couscous. I always liked couscous, so I was happy this one comes with couscous. The steaks were a bit rare, but that is so that they don’t get overcooked when you heat it up.

It came with chimichurri marinade, which was awesome. I am a fan of chimichurri sauce, so this dish was just perfect for me. The side dish was Roasted Cauliflower. The cauliflower was cooked to be soft without losing its firm texture. Simple and nice companion.

 

How to heat this baby correctly was a bit more complicated. If you want the steak to be rare, heat it up for 1:15 min. If you want it to be medium, 1:35 min. From these instruction, you can roughly calculate the time if you want something in the middle, or if you want it well done. Then, pour the sauce on top, and heat it again for 20 sec. I heat it up with the “medium” instruction and I liked the way it came out. And yes, I tasted the sauce first, and it was great, so I poured it all over the steak. The sauce was fresh and tasty, went perfect with the steak. The red peppers were smoky, and tomato added extra texture and fresh flavor. Couscous was soft and comforting, great companion to the strongly flavored steak with sauce. It was quite tasty.

And let’s not forget the “surprise cookie.” It was a chocolate chip cookie from Brooklyn. Thin and more crunchy than soft. It was a nice little sweet to have at the end of the meal, or as an afternoon snack when you want just a little bite of something sweet. Thanks for the sweet surprise, CookUnity!

Next was Pesto New York Strip Steak ($16.50) by chef Edward Rodwell. It comes with roasted potatoes. The side dish for this was a Simple Salad.

The steak was pre-sliced, even thought it doesn’t look like it. The portion of the steak was good, more potato than steak, but that was ok. You can eat but so much steak at one sitting.

This one, the instruction was to heat it up for one minute, pour the sauce, and cook for another minute. Of course, you can cook it longer if you want to steak to be well done. I prefer to have the steak medium rare, and this one looked pretty good after cooking it as instructed. The basil had excellent flavor of basil and Parmesan cheese. The steak cooked perfectly, and the potatoes paired with the steak really well. The potatoes were crushed a bit on purpose in order to absorb more of the flavor. Really tasty dish!

The salad was very, super fresh and the refreshing flavor balanced out the strong and rich flavor of the steak and potato. Crunchy and a perfect pallet cleanser.

So far so good…which was a wonderful surprise. So, we continued on. We got BBQ Chicken with Mac & Cheese ($14.50) By chef Chris Ratel.

It came with a pretty big chicken, and it was pretty awesome. The chicken was juicy and tender, fell off the bone easily. The Mac & cheese was solid as well, tasty with good texture and comforting. Rich with sharp cheddar and new American cheese. It had just a little kick from the mustard, well balanced against the sweetness from the dark brown sugar flavor. Very tasty indeed!

The side dish that came with it was Collard Greens, very fitting to the dish.

With all the great solid dishes, I wanted to try something a bit different. I went with Mahi Mahi Tacos ($15) by chef Ruben Garcia. It came with coleslaw and mayonnaise-based sauce. The side dish was Coconut Rice.

 

It came in three small tacos, with tortillas that looked like they were crispy. I expected them to be kind of soggy, since I was not going to be able to eat them right when they were cooked. It had a couple of fish pieces in the middle, and cabbage on the bottom.

Even though the wet ingredients – coleslaw and sauce – was not on the tacos, the tortilla was still a bit soggy on the bottom. And because of that, the soggy part couldn’t really hold the weight of the taco stuffing. Maybe the tortilla should be packaged separately to keep its freshness and crispy texture? I know that it will create more “assembly time” for the customer, but I would prefer to spend a little extra time to have fresh tortilla. Over all, it was tasty, each taco had nice fish fillets in it, and coconut rice went great with the tacos. This one didn’t really wow me, especially compared to other dishes.

Then there was Hoisin Glazed Short Ribs with Thai Noodles ($17.50) by chef Chris Ratel. This was my favorite of all the dishes that I tried. The aroma itself was amazing, in fact, it was so amazing that I just ate them all up…yes, without taking any photo!!! Well, if something is so delicious that it makes you forget to take a photo, then you know it was really, REALLY delicious. Here is a photo from CookUnity website. It didn’t really quite the same, I would say it looked better in reality. The meat was tender and the noodle had nice firm texture. The hoisin sauce was really nice, had great nutty flavor. The side dish was Ginger Slaw, which had a great flavor as well. It was really, very filling.

After tasting so many dishes from CookUnity, I was pleasantly surprised. They were so much better than I thought they would be. All the dishes were high quality, healthy and very tasty. I think it is a great lunch option, for busy people who want/need quality food delivered. They will most certainly be on the top of our list for when we need a lunch delivered. You want quality and tasty food delivered? Give CookUnity a try!

CookUnity – New York City