Fresh Dining?

Ed. - A special field report from Margaret Harper:

Purveyors of all things portable, the grocery delivery service, Fresh Direct, is now offering Fresh Dining meals. Prepared, but raw, these meals are geared to the health and taste conscious, but time-challenged individual. Fresh Direct offers several options, ranging from $6.99-$9.99, four fish, three chicken and a veggie selection. Each single serving meal comes in a microwavable plastic container and supposedly has a five day shelf life. Convenient, healthy and affordable...theoretically this should have been a life saver... a real boon to the busy Gothamite.In reality, however, it was far less impressive.

After cooking our dishes, the teryaki chicken and massaman curry, for the prescribed 3 and a half minutes, we sat down ready to be impressed by the 'freshness' of our meals. Oh, wait...still not quite done.Okay, after cooking our dishes for an additional minute, we sat down to eat.The teryaki chicken included basmati rice and assorted veggies, which were still a bit underdone.It earned only a rating of 'fair' and tasted really no fresher than a frozen meal. The massaman curry was also fair, but its taste was overshadowed by its possible lethality.After finishing all but one bit, Gothamist found a piece of chicken at the bottom that was still half raw. Not a pleasant way to end a meal.

The bottom line: don't trust their cooking directions. Also, don't trust their 'guarantee' of a five day shelf life. Our meals arrived on the 23rd with an expiration date of the 26th. Though Gothamist has enjoyed many other prepared foods from Fresh Direct (the penne vodka and mac and cheese were particularly yummy), the new 'Fresh Dining Meals' have come up short. We should probably try the other options before giving a definitive thumbs down, but, honestly, we'd rather spend the money on a pizza.

By Margaret Harper, special correspondent on location...in Brooklyn

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Food on February 13, 2006 3:42 PM

Comments [rss]

kristen

I think those Fresh Meals are way too expensive. I would have tried it, if it was the price of a frozen Dinner. I'm glad I have not ordered it. I think Fresh Directs Heat and Eat Meals are overpriced.

I ordered the pizza, but its the size of a regular frozen pizza.

I love Fresh Direct and I'm happy with the food and service I get but they should improve their heat and eat meals.

I like their bread and cookies.

alex

You're just better off just ordering take-out from your local Chinese place or just go get KFC. At least it's a lot "fresher" than microwaving supposedly fresh food.

Kiss the Cook

Any real cook knows if you cook *anything* in a microwave, fresh or not, it will taste like rubberized garbage.

Take the food out of the plastic container and cook it in a range oven instead of the microwave oven. I bet it will taste amazing.

Waaaah

A "special field report" on how some people slavishly follow instructions and then get frustrated when they don't exactly fit a given microwave. Did this person get paid for this "report"??? Because I would be more than happy to submit a special field report about how frustrated I am that it didn't take the advertised number of licks to get to the center of my Tootsie Roll Pop.

Callavere

Margaret: I had the exact same meals this weekend, and they came out fine. I particularly like the curry one. Did you check the wattage on your microwave? You could have a low wattage one.

jenfan

fresh food microwaved??? that's sure is a waste.

Chaka_kahn

I've tried a couple. I got the tilapia and the salmon. I added an extra minute for both b/c I have a kind of shit microwave. The tilapia turned out great and was delicious. The salmon was cooked beautifully but both the asparagus and the potatoes were undercooked. The asparagus need an extra 2 minutes. And I actually got one bad/funky potato in the salmon dish. The salmon dish also needed salt. I'd definitely go for the tilapia again if it wasn't so damned expensive. Slightly unrelated note: I really like fresh direct's chicken fingers.

notchy

their 'parbaked' flash-frozen bread tastes gross too after preparation...

john

My chicken was RAW too!!! I followed the instructions exactly! I love Fresh Direct but I will never buy one of those "fresh" meals again!

k8

i just tried one of these -- followed their directions and the salmon, potatoes and asparagus all turned out just right. if anything the asparagus was OVERcooked. maybe you need a new microwave (and something more interesting to blog about).

e

Wholefoods recently launched similar meals. Their price is $7.99, but they currently offer $2 off coupons bringing the price of the meal to $5.99. Just like the freshdirect meals, I had to microwave a couple times before everything was fully cooked.

jeremy

ewwww... it is in a plastic toxic container.

jgo

I think that Freshdirect's chicken fingers are excellent! But their meatballs were gross. Bottom line with freshdirect is they are overrated in my opinion. Has anyone tried the food delivery offerings from food emporium?

kay23

How do you know that you do not have a bad microwave? They all run differently.

AES

i think whoever wrote this 'review' should stop whining. how does this information even warrant an article??

you can't complain about your chicken being undercooked any more if you order it all prepped to go as a "cook and eat meal" than if you put the ingredients together yourself.

any normal person with marginal intelligence would simply cook their food for longer if it didn't work out!

sigh, people will blog about anything these days

miss modular

Fresh Direct's cooking instructions are notoriously unreliable, but I haven't had any problems with undercooking the Fresh Dining Meals.