I love to cook and try to make meals often, however many times I just don’t feel like making a meal and end up eating crap from a box or can. I have heard about the make ahead meal places like Supper Supers and Dinners By Design and I am interested. It doesn’t seem like it cost a lot more than what it would cost to make the same meals on my own.
So here are my questions Dopers… What are the portion sizes like? What about the quality of the meat? Do you feel like you got your money’s worth?
Are you talking about places where you can get pre-cooked meals ahead of time, or places where you go to cook your own meals, pay a specific price per portion, and take it home?
I have a little experience with the latter…my mom did this and I ate some of the food. It was perfectly good - the chicken breasts I had seemed to be of the same quality that I’d make at home. The portion sizes were definitely ample.
In our neck of the woods, the shop is just a big storefront with a bunch of prep stations that have ingredients for each of the month’s menu items. You go there, go around the stations and prepare dinners (uncooked) and then pay for what you’ve made. You can take the dinners home and freeze them to be cooked later.
I think that the price, food-wise, is a bit expensive. But you’re not just paying for the food, obviously. You’re paying for the people who work there (to pre-prep ingredients, do the shopping, clean up after you, etc), the convenience and the use of their equipment. So you’re not saving any money - but you are indeed getting homecooked, pre-portioned meals, made to your specifications without having to have any ingredients or tools stocked at home - and someone cleans up for you when you’re done
I think if you could afford to eat out for dinner every day but don’t feel like doing it, it’s a fine deal.
I tried Dream Dinners - they had an introductory offer.
Pros:
The food is good - I got three different meals - seafood, chicken and beef - and have liked them all.
They have some good, healthy choices for meals.
Cons:
They require you to buy more than I’d really like to make at one time - the minimum is 36 servings, which is a lot for 2 people. You can’t get a discount at the minimum either, which means some of entrees are a little pricey, imo.
Two of the dinners (the chicken and the beef) I got take too much time to cook at home. The beef carbonara takes 2 HOURS of cooking time! I wanted stuff that I could have ready in 30 minutes after work.
The servings aren’t big enough for my husband (the bottomless pit who can eat a mountain of food without gaining weight). I have to give him 2 servings, which makes the whole thing less cost effective.
Because of the cons, I probably won’t be going back despite the fact that the food is good, and pretty healthy overall.
I got a gift cert to a similar place and tried it twice. Mine allowed us to divide the portions into halves, which was nice. Most meals are meant to serve 4-6 and we only have 2 adults and a toddler so half portions worked out well.
A few of the meals were very good, most were ok. Nothing that I just went crazy over though. Mainly standard stuff. Things that sounded amazing from the descriptions were only so-so quite often. Like others have said, the cooking times are not always quick, so although prep and clean up is quicker and easier, you still have to plan ahead and defrost and get that thing in the oven.
It was nice to have some meals waiting in the freezer, but it would be too expensive to use it as a replacement for regular cooking, IMO. If it keeps you from getting takeout or fast food all the time then it’s probably worth it.
I had to ask for nutritional information, and some of the meals were quite high in calories and fat. I would like to see more healthy options, but maybe some places are better about that than others.
Overall, a decent experience but I wouldn’t make it a regular thing. I would be more interested in more experimental and gourmet offerings though, so maybe I just need a different place than the one I tried. For me, I tried to pick things that I couldn’t or wouldn’t make on my own, and that narrowed down a lot of choices. Some places cater more toward family and kid friendly meals that everyone will probably like, but I would rather find a place that gives me more interesting things than what I already make all the time. I am sure others are happy to have meals they know they will like, so YMMV.
FWIW I am planning on having these things as a backup on nights that I just don’t feel like cooking. I tend to go in spurts where I cook everynight for a couple weeks then don’t want to cook for a week or two. I’m planning on using these on those nights.
