Tag Archives: food delivery

Munchery

CHECK OUT: MY BUTCHER SHOP

Munchery is a food delivery service that brings you chef-prepared meals that just need to be heated or sauced prior to eating. They recently hooked me up with a $100 credit for me to test out their service. As such, I placed hefty orders on two different dates to test out their skills. I ordered for dinner both times, but they do offer lunch as well. My total for all of this food came to $95.

Dinner One

My delivery guy showed up on time, he was super nice, and seem to be delivering a ton of other orders. Here’s what we had:

Chirashi: This was really pretty. The rice was pre-seasoned with sesame seeds and other Japanese spices, and the sushi was all good quality and tasted fresh.

Farro, Black Rice & Kale Salad: I really liked the dressing and wanted more! The salad itself was massive. This could easily be an entree for one. Very nice.

Applewood Smoked Whole Chicken: Delicious. Awesomely smokey, juicy and flavorful. I really liked the sauce that came with it too.

Balsamic Marinated Tri-Tip Steak: Tri-tip is a very tricky thing to do right, and probably suffers a bit from a second heating process, but they did a pretty good job on it. The sides of peppers, potatoes and mushrooms were on point.

Dinner Two

Here’s a shot of everything:

Beet-Pickled Eggs on Boston Wedge: Your basic type of wedge salad, only with Boston leaf lettuce instead of Iceberg, and a nice touch of pickled eggs..

French Dip Beef Sandwich: Not too bad at all! It came with pickled red onion, which I love, extra juices for dipping, and a horseradish cream sauce. Very nice.

Misoyaki Glazed Salmon: This was the big winner of the meal. Nicely cooked, really tasty and balanced with both sweet and savory flavor elements. This was my wife’s favorite too.

Roasted Bistro Filet: This steak was more tender than the tri-tip, but it was unfortunately a bit overcooked when it arrived. It wasn’t ruined, but I was nervous to stick it back into the oven for the re-heating process. The blue cheese cream sauce and potatoes were delicious though.

All in, this is a great service. It’s really convenient to just have to pre-heat the oven, which you can do during the delivery time window, and then heat your food. Or in the case of something like the Chirashi or the salads, just dress and eat. It’s a perfect service for a city of tiny, useless kitchens and people who are way too busy to prepare and eat proper meals at home. I definitely recommend it!

Mahjong & Amazon Restaurants

Amazon recently launched a restaurant delivery service called Amazon Restaurants to compete with services like Seamless and GrubHub. They offered a few Instagram influencer friends and I some credit to try it out and post pics, give our thoughts, etc.

To make a whole night of it, we decided to order a whole bunch of Chinese food (and a little Thai) and make it game night as well with a Mahjong table and a deck of cards for Big Two.

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Here’s a list of what we ordered, from three different restaurants.

Kung Fu Little Steamed Buns & Ramen: Pan Fried Pork Dumplings, Sticky Rice Shao Mai, Sliced Beef with Tripe in Chili Oil, House Special Ramen, and Sticky Rice Balls in Chinese Sweet Liqueur.

Spice: Maekong Aged Pork Chops and Emerald Vegetable Dumplings.

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Hot Kitchen: Slow Grilled Lamb Ribs, Ma Po Tofu, Sliced Fish & Sour Cabbage Soup.

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Since I’ve reviewed Kung Fu before, I will focus on the other items here. The big standout for me was the slow grilled spicy lamb from Hot Kitchen. The cumin and red pepper dry spice is just fantastic. I highly recommend it, especially because lamb ribs are a rarity on menus.

While the pork chops from Spice were pricey and a bit dry, they were super tender and had a nice aged flavor to them. Perhaps get these in the restaurant, rather than for delivery, to ensure they are cooked properly.

As for the delivery service, Amazon Restaurants was great. They have a good selection of restaurants stretching across the city, and the food arrived in a timely manner, still hot and fresh. A welcome addition to the food delivery service market.

KUNG FU LITTLE STEAMED BUNS & RAMEN
811 8th Ave
New York, NY 10019

SPICE
435 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10024

HOT KITCHEN
251 E 53rd St
New York, NY 10022