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Return to the Kitchen
Gourmet Meals in a Hurry
Christine VanDeVelde discovers the new cooking center trend -- perfect
for families on the go. I have a love/hate
relationship with cooking. I love to cook for company. But I hate the
drudgery of cooking dinner every day. I've tried everything – a
full-time cook, a delivery service that drops off prepared meals, a cook
that comes in every few days and stocks the refrigerator. When all else
fails, the breadth of my takeout knowledge is impressive.
For many years, I was able to skirt the issue of
dinner. My twenties were spent grabbing a chicken breast and a stalk of
broccoli from the neighborhood grocery store on the nights I wasn't
dining on happy hour hors d'oeuvres or at a bistro on my date's dime.
But with marriage and a child, the dinner hour loomed as the most
burdensome of my responsibilities. I was raised on the Cleavers, the
Nelsons, and the Donna Reed Show where Donna Stone, her doctor
husband and their children Jeff and Mary all sat down to dinner every
night. Even the boys at the Ponderosa ate together.
Families are supposed to dine together and for good
reason beyond teaching children to engage in polite conversation and
which fork to use. Studies of family eating patterns from Columbia
University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and others
have found that teens who eat dinner with their families five or more
nights a week are at half the risk of starting to smoke, drink, do
drugs, suffer from eating disorders or get depressed. They are also
twice as likely to get As in school.
And yet, making dinner every night still feels like
the worst chore. A July 2006 Parenting poll found that 68% of
mothers are sick of cooking and would rather have someone do it for
them. Well, now they can. Last May, local couple Jeff and Jami Stevens
opened Deeelish in Menlo Park. Deeelish is a five-star version of the
commercial meal-assembly kitchens that have opened up across the country
in the last four years. (See sidebar.)
Here is how it works. Each month, Deeelish Head
Chef Lev Dagan, an instructor at the California Culinary Academy and a
veteran of Bay area restaurants such as Mill Valley's El Paseo, creates
a menu of 14 different meals. You, the customer, visit
www.deeelish.com where you register and select a minimum of eight
meals. Each meal contains four to six servings, depending on whether
you're feeding adults or children. Payment is by credit card, after you
sign up for one of their two-hour sessions – afternoon or evening -- to
put together your meals at the Deeelish kitchen at 700 El Camino Real in
Menlo Park. (Deeelish staff will assemble your meals for you to pick up
for an additional fee.)
The only thing you need to bring to your session is
a cooler or insulated carrier to tote your meals home. You simply don an
apron and get to work. All ingredients are pre-prepared—washed, diced,
sliced, chopped – with instructions for their assembly posted at the
eight individual stainless steel commercial workstations. And the best
part? The kitchen staff cleans up behind you, quickly and quietly
whisking away used utensils and spills. As you finish each meal, you
place it on a tray labeled with your name and Deeelish staff vacuum seal
it. This is an important difference between Deeelish and other assembly
kitchens. Deeelish uses a commercial-grade vacuum packager, which keeps
the meals safe and fresh; others use plastic containers or even Ziploc
bags. Deeelish also sends you home with a crib sheet of recommendations
for food safety and storage. Each package is clearly labeled with the
date and cooking instructions. And voila! You have home-cooked meals for
your family for a week!
This all sounded great but I wanted to see and
taste for myself. So I signed up for a session and took along my friend
Angela, who is not only a fabulous cook, but also a former nurse with
high standards for cleanliness and food safety in the kitchen. We were
both impressed with the Deeelish facility – it's bright and modern, done
in hues of orange, copper and rich brown. There is a bar at the front
of the facility where complimentary soft drinks and coffee are served
and a seating area with comfortable upholstered chairs where you can
wait for your pick-up or your friends to arrive. Shelves hold individual
baskets where you can stow your purse or wrap. And this is just one of
the many details that show Jeff and Jami Stevens, a working couple with
three young children, have designed Deeelish with the hectic Bay area
lifestyle in mind and with an eye toward making the chore of dinner
easier in every way. During the morning sessions, fresh hot scones are
served and in the evening, fresh-baked cookies. Everything is impeccably
clean and well-lit. The staff is friendly, polite and endlessly helpful.
And there is plenty of parking.
The meals are a mix of sophisticated and
kid-friendly and portions are generous. Between the two of us, in just
over an hour, Angela and I put together nine different meals including
grilled balsamic flank steak, burgers stuffed with blue cheese and
sun-dried tomatoes, chicken kebabs with Greek seasoning, shrimp
Provencal, and an artichoke tequila chicken casserole. Another important
aspect is that, at the margin, these meals are customizable. For my
family, I went light on the fats and heavier on the spices like hot
peppers and chopped garlic. Over the next few weeks, Angela and I fed
our families from Deeelish and they loved absolutely everything.
Here is why. Jeff Stevens' focus is on providing a
high-end experience in every way, but the most important aspect of this
is food quality and it's here that Stevens has a big advantage over the
national franchise meal assembly kitchens. When a Deeelish recipe calls
for corn, it's fresh off the cob. While Bay area customers of the
franchises pick meals from the same national menu that is being used in
Oklahoma, Deeelish menus are specifically planned with the more
sophisticated and demanding Bay area palate in mind. Ingredients are
fresh, seasonal and local. There are no dried herbs, canned soups or
frozen vegetables. Beef is from Niman Ranch, produce is just-picked, the
ground chicken used for the lettuce wraps is all white meat. Every
recipe is tested in the Deeelish kitchen for both taste and appearance.
In the future, Jeff and Jami Stevens are looking at
providing a 100% organic menu several days a month and are already
working on a larger retail capacity, allowing busy moms to stop by and
pick up a marinade, fresh produce or an entire meal on their way home
from soccer practice instead of ordering in advance. And you'll be glad
to know they'll have a delivery capability soon. They also offer gift
certificates and I can't think of a more thoughtful gift for a teacher,
a new neighbor or a household with a newborn.
Overall, Angela and I came away giving Deeelish an
A plus in every category, including affordability. We assembled our nine
meals – remember that's a minimum 36 servings – for less than $250. We
both appreciated the fact that the Stevens don't nickel and dime the
customer. For example, there is no charge for splitting the minimum of 8
meals between two people, a practice common to the franchises. The
Stevens' goal is high repeat business and it shows. It's enough to make
cooking dinner a pleasure. Angela and I will be back… and soon.
Making Cooking Fun
Meal assembly kitchens are the fastest growing
segment in the food industry. According to the industry trade group Easy
Meal Prep Association, as of July, there were 302 companies with 870
outlets. Here are some in your neighborhoods.
Dream Dinners is the largest of the national
franchises and we’re hearing raves from Peninsula women who are keeping
the sessions booked solid at their two Peninsula locations -- 390 El
Camino Real in Belmont and 14107 T Winchester Boulevard in Los Gatos.
www.dreamdinners.com
Chef Dane’s is another franchise kitchen at 1725 De
La Cruz Boulevard in Santa Clara and planned openings in both Burlingame
and Saratoga.
www.chefdanes.com
Super Suppers is a franchise kitchen located at
4980 Cherry Avenue in San Jose with a Sunnyvale location opening soon.
www.supersuppers.com
Sous Kitchen is an independent kitchen like
Deeelish, located at 975-D Industrial Road in San Carlos.
www.souskitchen.com
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