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Where HelloFresh tends to work best for me is eating out three or four times a week. This leaves it as a treat on those tough days when making my own meals seems impossible. Spending $80 a week on three meals for two will keep me from blowing $60 on one (medium) desperate DoorDash. And unlike DoorDash, when I finish cooking Thai green curry on my stovetop, I feel a sense of accomplishment.
The problem, in the past, was that food items often repeated the menu, or sounded the same. In 2020, after using the service to hold back tears during the pandemic, HelloFresh was boring again. But these days, HelloFresh isn’t boring unless you want it to be. Among the nearly 500 dishes are burgers, wraps, and salads, along with many other wonders of the world.
Photo: Matthew Korfhage
Last week I made Gambian chiponde stew, Thai green curry shrimp, North African beef ras el hanout, Tex-Mex chicken enchiladas, American-Chinese ginger-garlic-scallion steak stir fry, and Lebanese barramundi whitefish. No meal took 45 minutes to prepare and cook. And aside from the enchiladas, I probably wouldn’t have made them myself if I didn’t have these little freezer bags.
This is the promise of food apps like HelloFresh. It’s a possible vision for staying at home – one that allows you to make delicious meals without having to work, well, think.
Choices, Choices, Choices
HelloFresh is an international food chain, which is available in 18 countries mainly in the North and West of the world (including Australia). Looking at food items last year, I wrote that what HelloFresh has mastered is the ability to create a bright, international-looking menu in line with modern tastes: pan-Latin rice dishes with American steak, pan-fried beef with ponzu and plums, Turkish chicken dishes, maybe mango salsa in the obscure southwest. “I am Alison Roman the world,” I wrote, “We all live in it.”
With the new HelloFresh update, you can still get the HelloFresh version if you want. But honestly, there are so many ways that no two people enter the same HelloFresh universe. Vegan options, including Impossible beef and tofu everywhere, run rampant. On May 11 there are about 20 couscous dishes, from “herby salmon” to “trattoria pork chops”. If I want, I can order black couscous and add 5 ounces of turkey or beef to each meal, for $2.
