SIDESBAR WINTER 2021 - 8

MONTGOMERYBAR.ORG

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Living and Eating
Well During Tough Times

www.hellofresh.com

A review of Hello Fresh home meal kit delivery.
Cook your own gourmet meals.
By Robert R. Watson, Jr., Esq.

W

hile planning our winter
edition of the Sidebar, our
committee didn't know exactly
how to approach our regular Restaurant
Review column. We would all love to run
out to our favorite MontCo bistro - or even
try someplace brand new - and share the
experience with our readers. We even had a
few more weeks of warmer weather this past
fall, allowing for greater flexibility for COVIDsafe outdoor dining. But as with many other
workarounds, the warmer summer months
allowed us to enjoy the pursuit of maintaining
some semblance of normalcy, we have found
ourselves held-up in our homes with even more
regularity, shutting down more and more aspects of our outside
lives like bears moving into hibernation for a long, hard winter.
We are not bears, though. We still enjoy the comforts of
our own homes, and the safety and familiarity they afford each
of us and our families. Don't get me wrong, the Watson house
has seen its share of takeout deliveries, and we will continue to
support our local restaurants old and new. An end to all of this
is in sight, and we can't wait to head back into town to celebrate
at our favorite eateries. Still, being stuck at home as much as we
are, it's good to mix things up when we cook for ourselves. Our
regular comfort food menu is great, but variety is the spice of life
- especially now.
For us, this is where increasingly-popular home meal kits
have been coming into play. You probably notice more and more
of them deposited on doorsteps in your neighborhood early in
the week. We've enjoyed getting meal kits delivered for two
meals a week for almost 2 years now. This article presented as

8 SIDEBAR

good an opportunity as any to share what we like
about them.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept, first,
think about those times when you plan to make
a special meal at home. Because it's special, you
never have any of the ingredients. After making
your grocery list based on whatever new recipe
you're planning to cook, you head to the store
(mask on) only to realize you have no idea where
half the unique ingredients are located. Once
you find everything, you have no choice but to
purchase four times the actual amount of each
item you need to put the meal together. Not
the end of the world for non-perishables, but for
other items you end up filling your refrigerator with extras only to
have to throw out many of them in a few days or a week, because
you simply don't have use for all the extra basil or scallions you
bought.
In my mind, that's where the meal kit comes in. Every week,
you can pick among dozens of restaurant-quality dishes, decide
how many servings you'll be making, and let the service do the rest
of the hunting and gathering. Once you order, you'll be scheduled
to receive a box a week with all of the ingredients to make those
meals you selected inside - perfectly portioned, completely fresh,
and delivered well-refrigerated in sustainable packaging.
We have used a few of these meal kit services. There are a
number of options on the market. For the past year, our absolute
favorite has been Hello Fresh (www.hellofresh.com). Touted as
" America's Most Popular Meal Kits, " we find that the selection of
available meals match our own tastes best. Hello Fresh also has
reliable order fulfilment and menus to satisfy a wide variety of
palates. Like most of its competitors, Hello Fresh offers a number
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SIDESBAR WINTER 2021

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