MUNCHERY DELIVERY.....WHEN YOU ARE ONLY HALF LAZY

The abundance of food delivery start-ups continues unabated here in the Bay Area. It seems overtime I log on I see an add for a new service. Having done things like Doughbies, Sprig, Bento, GrubHub, etc., I decided to give Munchery a few tries to check how it compares to others. Much like the others, you can order online or through their app, which I think they prefer. They release a menu early in the day and you can order breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can also order at anytime of the day and set a specific delivery time. There are a few other things but how's the food?

Me and the SO have tried them 5 or 6 times (just for dinner) to varying degrees of success. It seems best to place your order as early in the day as you can since they seem to run out of dishes as the day progresses. Being able to select your delivery time is also a good thing. If you wait till high volume times when everyone else eats, delivery can take up to an hour or more. Which isn't so much fun if you are really hungry. Just something to keep in mind if you try them. Below are the items we ordered on several occasions but I'm not going to go into too much detail on each dish. I will cover a few highs and lows overall.

meatloaf, broccoli, mashed potatoes          grilled tofu, broccolini               pot roast, mashed potatoes

              portobello mushroom burger                            lamb moussaka and salad

                               grilled pork chops, kale              fried chicken, slaw, mashed potatoes

                          chocolate chip pumpkin loaf                                    carrot pecan cakelette

                     Paleo coconut macaroon                              salty sweet chocolate chip cookie 

The meatloaf tasted more like a plain ground hamburger. Many of the dishes lack seasoning and tasted a little plain. The mashed potatoes were good. The ones with the chicken come with peppers to give it a little kick. The pot roast meat was tender. Tofu portion was a little on the small side and if there was peanut on it, I totally missed it. The fried chicken did not re-heat well (see below) and thus didn't have that nice crispy skin you want. Lamb moussaka was a nice sized portion, though needed seasoning or at least some salt. The first time we got this it had little bits of carrot in it that were not cooked giving it a weird crunch. Second time around they weren't there and it was better without them. Liked the slaw it was vinegar based. I liked the portobello burger thing, the SO did not. Though, the picture online had 2 mushroom tops with it, but I only got one. I wasn't a fan of the pumpkin loaf but the SO liked it. We both liked the carrot cakelette thing and it came with cream cheese frosting. The pork and kale thing was okay, though pieces of pork were kind of small. Cookie was good. Like with many food delivery places, some things were good, some were so-so, and others could have been seasoned up a bit to make them more interesting. 

One big thing to keep in mind with Munchery, the food you get is what I'll call mostly finished cooking. You get them in a semi-cold state with directions for heating up/finish cooking them. It's like if you are feeling semi-lazy and want to whip up something but don't necessarily have all the ingredients or the energy to schlep all the way to the grocery store and back. It can however, give off the feeling that you are eating leftovers as opposed to fresh delivery, but maybe that was just me. Some of these items re-heat well--veggies, meatloaf, mashed potatoes. And some things don't--fried chicken specifically, tofu surprisingly. It really is a mixed bag so choose carefully and I'd suggest reading the customer reviews too, it will help a little. I guess if you don't mind reheating your food it's fine, sometimes though, we do prefer our delivery to be ready to just open, plop on the couch and eat while watching TV. 

One advantage Munchery has over some other services is variety. Each day they do offer a fair number of choices which some others don't. They also have kids meals items. Though, as stated above, they do run out of popular ones the later in the day you wait. 

The scheduled delivery worked out nicely. There is a one hour window you have to give, but they were there roughly 15 minutes past the top of the hour I chose each time.

Price wise, most items range between $8.95 and $12.95 (with a few items slightly above that). That's right in range of say Sprig. But portion sizes are not always the biggest. With Sprig, we usually had some left for lunch the next day. Not so much with Munchery. Moussaka and meatloaf we could squeeze out another serving. The rest were closer to single servings. Also, a couple of their sandwich like things don't come with sides and run into the whole $9 or $10 sandwich thing I'm not a fan of, making if difficult to want to order them again. 

Overall, I'd still say they are worth trying since they do offer multiple things when you are tired of the same old Chinese or Indian delivery or just can't do another slice of pizza. I'm still gonna say I like Sprig a tad better for inventive and better tasting dishes but Munchery gets the variety of choices thumbs up. 

I can't see doing them on a regular basis, unless you have one of those high disposable income kind of jobs. But every now and then when you are not feeling too lazy and don't mind reheating your delivery, they'd be worth a try. Remember, order early, choose wisely and make sure you have something to heat it up in. Nobody likes cold meatloaf or tofu, especially when it's chilly outside.