…not bad for the discount but sort of expensive for full price.
For those who have not heard of this-Plated is hallway between a meal delivery service and grocery delivery. You choose your dish (from a selection of 7 dishes a week) and they send you the ingredients and a recipe. You have to order in 2-person servings although they pretend to charge per serving, and you have to choose at least 2 dishes. The standard price-without signing up for a subscription, is $30 for 2 “plates” or a minimum of $60 for 2 servings each of 2 different dishes. However, they have $30 off coupons to suck you in. A lot of their dishes are vegetarian, but I figured I would go with the meat/fish options for better value.
So-I tried their Asian Duck Tacos and Curried Redfish Roti and they were actually quite good.
I wanted to try the duck because I’ve never actually cooked duck and I wouldn’t know where to buy a single duck breast anyway. The recipe is sort of a poor-man’s Peking Duck but I managed to render the fat successfully and got a crispy skin with medium-rare meat. The tacos tasted good-but frankly, Styrofoam would taste good covered with hoisin sauce and eaten in a flour pancake with scallions and cucumber. I also apparently successfully pickled the cucumber, so 2 new techniques learned. I could certainly see paying $15 for this dish at a restaurant for 6 generous tacos, so it was well-worth the discounted price.
The redfish roti was also delicious. The cost per serving probably comes in at much less than $15, but to make it I would have to buy the fish, all the spices, and tamarind sauce as well as cilantro. Having dealt with this before, I know that I would end up paying $30-40 for ingredients and using 1/10th of them before they went bad.
So, for somebody who lives alone, this was actually a good deal. It got me to try some new things that I cooked fresh and ended up costing $15.00 for a meal with leftovers (which isn’t that much more than 2 fast food meals or ordering takeout Chinese or pizza). Unfortunately, I don’t think I can afford it at twice the price, especially for vegetarian entrees. I wish they would continue to let me use coupons. I might try it again in the future, especially if I wanted to make a meal for two. It would impress as a date-night meal and I wouldn’t have to worry about leftovers.