New Meal Kit Options Beckon

Food delivery platforms for restaurants cover a wide spectrum of cuisines and prices. The new service WEAT offers meal packages from small independent restaurants trying to hang on during the pandemic. The boxes, from an array of cuisines, contain the components for dishes to prepare. A dumpling kit with a bamboo steamer from 456 New Shanghai is $40, and a copious and complex Vietnamese meal serving two from Bolero is $80 ($75 for vegetarian). Individual items are also sold. Ingredients are premeasured — often including items that are hard to find — and some of the instructions and labeling could be more precise. Ramp up the price point and you have another set of options from Taste, offering complete meal boxes from restaurants with Michelin stars on a weekly rotating basis. They require finishing at home with well-written instructions. The restaurants include Musket Room (fine duck rillettes, roast chicken, barley with mushrooms), Crown Shy, Benno, Mifune, Gabriel Kreuther, Casa Enrique and others, $29 to $108 per person. Delivery is extra, but not punishing.

WEAT, weatinc.com; Taste, gettaste.com.

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source: nytimes.com