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9/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDFlavorful, filling, actually delicious prepared meals delivered to your home. Meals designed by restaurant chefs. No microwave required. Wide variety of cuisines represented. Many meals delivered the same day they're packed.TIREDQuality and selection may differ depending on region and chef. Not all areas served. Must enter contact information before seeing the week’s menu.My lunch felt impossible. Was my fried chicken actually … crispy and moist?
This result was by no means likely. After all, I'd received this chicken in a sealed microwavable tray three days ago, by courier from Seattle to Portland, Oregon. It seemed unlikely that my Night Market Chicken from meal delivery service CookUnity would stand up to the harsh light of day when reheated.
And yet, here we were. When heated in an air fryer, the chicken's breading was nicely crisp. The meat was tender, juicy even. The Asian-influenced sesame-soy glaze was pleasantly sweet and tangy, paired with a heaping portion of egg fried rice. If this had been takeout food from a restaurant down the street, I would have accepted it gladly.
CookUnity’s Night Market Chicken, from chef Kevin Meehan
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageIn fact, a number of the meals I've tasted from CookUnity over the past two years have rivaled restaurant takeout—a genuine rarity among prepared delivery meals. Most of the big meal delivery services have branched out into ready-to-heat prepared meals, and I've tried most of them. CookUnity is the best I've tried by a pretty long margin, while maintaining similar prices: $12 to $13 a meal on the most common plans.
CookUnity stands out for two reasons. One is that it's less reliant on the microwave—offering alternate instructions that still usually only take five or 10 minutes. The other is that the meals are prepared in kitchens run by actual restaurant chefs, who each put their name and face on the box.
My tasty Night Market Chicken came from the Seattle commissary of Michelin-decorated LA chef Kevin Meehan. And while I doubt Michelin will come calling this time, it was a genuine prize winner among work lunches hoovered over my laptop. And while last year I worried that veggies were a rarity, this year CookUnity's meals have expanded in both quantity and variety.
Here's how it works, and my (quite good) results.
SpecsCost per meal$12 to $16 per meal, variable shipping depending on distance from hubMeal plan optionsChoose anywhere from four to 16 meals a weekLowest-cost plan at full price$74; four meals plus shippingSize of weekly menuVaries by hub; even small hubs offer 200+ meals.Gluten-free meals?On some weeks, half of meals might be listed as gluten-freePlant-based meals?About a fifth of meals are vegetarian or veganOther dietary plans or restrictionsMeal filters include high protein, low carb, keto, and GLP-1 balancePrep timeA few minutes in the microwave, or maybe 15 minutes in an oven or on the stovetopThe Chef-Centric Delivery Model
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageThe reason CookUnity is not like other prepared meal services is that, quite frankly, it's not like other prepared meal services. CookUnity is a singular model, something like a cross between a meal service and DoorDash.
Rather than make recipes in a top-down corporate kitchen, CookUnity is regional. The service enlists local and national chefs and promises to bring restaurant-quality meals to the home—prepared according to recipes from occasionally quite big names. (Hello, Jose Garces. Hello, Esther Choi.)
Like a lot of meal kits, CookUnity is a subscription service. You choose the number of prepared meals that you want delivered each week—and then pick out your meals from that week's menu. It's around $12 a meal if you get 10 portions a week—or more than $15 if you only want four meals. This is more than scratch cooking or a frozen dinner, but less than restaurant delivery or takeout.
CookUnity via Matthew KorfhageThe meal service is run out of eight regional commissary hubs around the United States and Canada: Seattle, LA, Austin, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Toronto. Each hub has its own stable of chefs: Some are local. Some are kitchens operated by national chefs. This does have the side effect of leaving out most of West Virginia and a good swath of the Plains states.
If your zip code is covered, it goes like this: You sign up for a certain number of single-serve meals per week, which arrive in heatable trays in a big, cold-packed box. A representative menu for each region is available here, but you won't see any given week's menu where you live till you've entered your zip code and handed out your email address. (I know, I don't love this either.)
Generally, if you order by Thursday, you can have delivery of your week's meals by Monday. Meals can be filtered for meal type (salad, meats and twos, pasta, et al.), vegan, vegetarian, GLP-1, fiber-rich, precise calorie counts (whether high or low), and a whole host of allergens. They can also be sorted by chef, and range from dainty 500-calorie lunches to 1,200-calorie feasts like that Night Market Chicken.
Each meal arrives in a tray that looks like a TV dinner, and I can microwave it in three minutes if I want. I usually don't, because each meal also has “chef-recommended” heating methods for optimal results. Maybe this involves a 10-minute turn in a toaster oven or a five-minute sauté. (Often, I sub in an air fryer where toaster ovens are suggested, with excellent results.)
Local Chefs, Local Menus
CookUnity Farro, Beets & Greens Salad from chef Dustin Taylor
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageOne of the most interesting things about CookUnity is that chefs and menus are different for each region. My hub, in Seattle, is among the smallest with only a dozen chefs. But because each chef offers anywhere from eight to 20 meals, my weekly menu in Seattle still ranged above 200 dishes. This is a far greater variety than when I first tried the service last year.
CookUnity calls itself a “chef collective.” In practice, this means it enlists restaurant chefs, including an interesting preponderance of Iron Chef alumni, to design recipes and run teams of cooks in any of the eight regional commissary kitchens. Ingredients are sourced for the chefs by CookUnity in a shared kitchen. CookUnity handles the delivery. It also handles the packaging technology, which, through the magic of modified atmosphere packaging, can be stored at fridge temps for four to seven days.
Many chefs expand nationally to multiple hubs. In Seattle, I can order sweet-sauced barbecue chicken herbed up with Haitian epis from Texas West-Indian chef Nahika Hillery, chicken adobo from Los Angeles chef Stacy Baraeng, or a summery udon from Esther Choi.
But my favorite dishes didn't come from the national chefs and celebrities—and indeed, the meat in a pork adobo from Baraeng came out a bit tough. What I loved best were the flavorful Indian gravies from Odisha-born Seattle chef Gaurav Raj, whether a lightly fiery chicken lababdar or a smooth and rich butter chicken.
At a lower cost, each of Raj's delivery meals consistently tastes better than the (admittedly not great) Punjabi restaurant down the street from me—less sugary, more rich, with saffron-tinged basmati and chicken that remains juicy and plump, not overcooked. Raj's Indian gravies offer the most compelling argument for me to order CookUnity, in a city (Portland) where the best Indian food is often a half-hour drive into the suburbs.
But, of course, Raj's meals are available only to those served by the Seattle hub. Others, near Los Angeles or Atlanta, may have other local chefs who offer similarly compelling arguments. I wouldn't know.
Local Mileage May Differ
CookUnity Beef Stroganoff with Truffle & Pappardelle from chef John DeLucie
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageThe strength of CookUnity is that each regional hub is basically local. But this is also a potential weakness: Each regional hub is different. Each hub has greater or lesser variety. Each also has a different selection of chefs and meals.
But my good experience with the Seattle hub might translate to what you'll find in a different kitchen, with different cooks. This may be true even if the same chef's name and face are on your meal box. Some chefs operate four or five kitchens at different hubs, and different kitchens may have different results, even with the same recipes. And heck, I've had different results even from the same chefs. I can only speak to my own good experience and the good experience of my colleague Louryn Strampe, who ordered out of the Chicago hub.
Note that while CookUnity offers a much bigger caloric range than most prepared meal kits, usually the big feasts are heavily carb-loaded: rice, noodles, pasta. Those looking for a focus on proteins and veggies can find them easily, but usually in more moderate portions. Food cost is food cost. Starches are cheap.
But I have reason to believe that CookUnity's other hubs also offer good cooking—and that has a lot to do with CookUnity's business model. The overall factor that I think makes CookUnity work is healthy competition.
Each CookUnity chef making prepared meals is, essentially, a competing food business within the same big commissary kitchen. Their name is on each box, and a good number of the chefs have restaurants and reputations to protect. There are many incentives to make each meal interesting and delicious. My experience bears this out.
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