Urban Manna – the answer to my prayers!

I know, I know – I said last time that I would write about Gold Class Cinemas.  We’ll get to that in the very near future – I promise.  But for now, I do want to tell you about a recent experience I had with Urban Manna – a gourmet dinner delivery service for busy professionals.

Now full disclosure, I know the people who are starting on this fabulous food adventure – they are neighbors and friends.  That being said, I also know good food when I eat it and I’m excited to say I’ve had a lot of good food in the last few weeks thanks to Urban Manna.  Todd and I were lucky enough to be invited to take part in their trial run, which meant 6 free meals spread out over two weeks.  The only thing they asked for was our feedback.  Not a bad tradeoff, huh?

So the way it works is that you give Urban Manna some basic information about yourself and your food preferences (allergies, likes, dislikes, etc.) and they keep that in mind when preparing your dinner.  The meals are prepared the night before and delivered in a cute little Urban Manna bag that arrives at your door between 10pm and 6am.  It was such a treat to open the door each morning and find that little bag waiting patiently for us to grab it and pop it in the fridge.  The first week of the trial we received whatever was cooking for that night, so it was a bit of a surprise.  The second week, we were provided with options to select from ahead of time – so that gave us a little more control.  Either way, we ate VERY well those two weeks.  Let me fill you in on what we received:

Day 1 – Coq Au Vin – Juicy and moist chicken in a savory broth with pearl onions and mushrooms, served with spinach with garlic and rice on the side.  Accompanied by a starter salad and french roll.

Day 2 – Beer Brisket, served with potatoes and green beans, topped with onion and bacon.  Accompanied by a starter salad and roll.

Day 3 – Shrimp Scampi, served on a bed of angel hair pasta with a side of broccoli in garlic butter.  Accompanied by Italian Wedding soup and a roll.

Day 4 – Grape Leaf wrapped Mediterranean Red Snapper, with rice pilaf and sherry/garlic snap peas.  Accompanied by homemade black bean soup (and all the garnishes) and a roll.

Day 5 – Chicken breast stuffed with Blue Cheese and wrapped in Bacon, served with Dan’s secret recipe mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts.  Accompanied by a Winter Apple Harvest salad and a roll.

Day 6 – Chicken Piccata, served with wilted spinach with garlic and olive oil.  Accompanied by Caeser Salad and a french baguette.

Sounds pretty darn fantastic, right?  Now, some meals were higher on my list than others (I’ll get to those in a minute), but bottom line, every one of them was solid.  I was happy to be eating all of them – and more importantly, pretty much every part of each meal – which is saying a lot!

Here were my favorites:

The Shrimp Scampi was to die for.  Now maybe I’m a bit biased since I love garlic and this had plenty of that.  It was buttery and rich and delicious and I didn’t want to stop eating it.  Also, I’m not a huge broccoli fan and I ate every bite of my broccoli.  It was soft without being mushy, just the tiniest bit of firmness – and in the garlic butter sauce – heaven!  Also, the Italian Wedding soup was SO good.  I could have eaten that as my meal alone, had there been more of it.  It was chock full of pasta, carrot, spinach and meatballs and the spices were just right.  I’m hoping it makes it into the regular rotation.

Another favorite was the Chicken breast stuffed with Blue Cheese and wrapped in Bacon.  Yum, yum and more yum!  Juicy delicious white meat chicken, a pungent, tasty blue cheese and crisp bacon.  Dan’s mashed potatoes melted in my mouth (he says he won’t give anyone the secret to this recipe, but I’m going to work on that!).  And – the surprising thing – I LOVED the brussel sprouts.  They removed the tough outer leaves, bathed, blanched and then tossed them with clarified  butter with minced onions, garlic and spices (I know this because it said so on the nice little description that came with our meal).  All I have to say is delicious – and I haven’t touched a brussel sprout since I was a kid.  I’m a fan now!  At least of their way of preparing brussel sprouts.

I know there are plenty of meal delivery services out there these days – some delivered fresh and others frozen, but all heated up in the microwave.  So here is the distinguishing factor about Urban Manna.  You don’t use your microwave – unless you want to heat up your bread/roll.  Urban Manna cooks all of your meals perfectly and then vacuum seals each part in its own perfect little bag.  So how do you heat it up?  You bring a pot of water to boil and then drop each vacuum sealed bag in, boil for 6 or 12 minutes depending on the instructions provided and viola!  Perfect meal!

Ok, have I lost any of you yet?  I hope not, because I can relate to what some of you might be thinking right now.  Why would I want to boil my dinner to reheat when I have a perfectly good microwave that is designed to do just that.  Well, the reality is (as much as we may not want to admit it), the microwave just doesn’t heat evenly or consistently.  Leaving little pockets of food cool or cold, with others scalding hot.  What the founders of Urban Manna soon figured out in all of their testing is that the only way to ensure a consistently heated meal, while also preserving all of the flavor and nutrients, was to use the vacuum seal/boil method.  I was skeptical when they told me.  Are people really going to want to get out their big stock pots, wait for the water to come to a boil and then plop these bags in for the 6 to 12 minutes?  Well, I decided the only way to know for sure was to try it for myself.

And you know what I found out?  It’s not a big deal at all.  For each trial night, I would come home, fill my pot up with water, put it on the stove to boil, go change into my comfy clothes and check my email.  I would review the instructions to determine how long each component may need to boil, then once the water was at full boil, I dropped each bag in at the appropriate time.  I used tongs to pull each bag out of the water, snipped open the ends of the bags with scissors and then slid each item out onto the plates.  I was more than a little surprised when I realized – hey!  These plates actually look REALLY good!  In fact, they match the little pictures provided with my instructions.  I must be doing something right!  What was even more surprising is that things that should be crispy (like the bacon wrapped around the chicken breasts) actually stayed crispy, despite being stored for the day and reheated.  I think this must be due to the vacuum seal – it really does keep everything fresh.

But the real test came when I took the first bite of each meal and discovered – um, these are delicious!  The flavors just came bursting forth.  This was way better than other meal delivery services I’ve tried.  Now, that may be because those other services were focused on diet and weight loss.  Urban Manna isn’t about that.  It’s about getting a balanced, gourmet meal that you can have waiting for you when you get home from work and takes about 15-20 minutes to prepare and plate.  For someone who works 9 hours a day, this is the answer to my prayers!  I don’t have to pick anything up from the store or grab take-out from a restaurant, or place an order and wait for it to be delivered.  It is there waiting for me and after just 15 minutes or so, it is sitting on my plate, steaming and delicious.  All I can say is, how can I get more of this – NOW!

The Urban Manna folks also invited all of their trial run customers to a focus group at the end of the trial period.  They were conspicuously absent during this evening, while a facilitator walked us through a couple of brainstorming and idea provoking questions, while also plying us with delicious appetizers and an open bar.  Not a bad way to say thanks for our participation and feedback!

As I mentioned, all of the meals during the trial were really great and I would order any one of them again.  In fact, I’m hoping to do that very soon – but unfortunately I will have to wait (as will all of you) until the official launch of Urban Manna near the beginning of April.  I suggest you check them out and get on the waiting list too!  Check out their Facebook page here.