When the pandemic first hit last year, I wrote a little post about the struggles that many wedding venues were faced with. To stay alive, to keep the business humming along and staff employed, many of our venue partners took a quick pivot into the meals at home service. I thought now would be a great time to follow through with one of those food services which had caught my eye last year.
One of the perks of my job is that in amongst a long day of making the magic happen at a wedding, there is usually a meal waiting for me at some point during the reception.
When the Grand Pacific Group last year announced a new arm of their business Yes Chef I paid attention. After all, I’ve had the pleasure of eating many meals at all of their venues. It did have me wondering, would it be as good as the rest of the meals I’ve eaten onsite?
Last year in the midst of pandemic fatigue, the delights of homeschooling and trying to keep up with rescheduling basically every event we had in the diary – the notion of not even having to think of what I was going to cook for dinner was pretty appealing.
Cue Yes Chef. I placed my order for the first box. I decided to try out the 3 day a week lunch and dinner option. The box arrived, perfectly insulated and very non-descript. The packaging pleasingly all recyclable and the portions in oven-ready boxes. There is a tiny bit of prep that you’ll need to do at home but the food is pretty amazing. Everything is packaged up and labelled up according to the day you should prepare it. And it’s all so fresh. It’s sort of the guilt-free take-away option that has been missing in my life for a while. When you can pull a perfectly cooked portion of fish out of the oven and it still melts in your mouth, in my opinion – that’s pretty spectacular.
A very neat little package with everything you need.
The burden of mealtime is somewhat reduced. The noise from my kids at home during lockdown, not so much. I never take any pleasure eating anything I cook myself. It could be my cooking (!!) but having someone cook for me just makes my day that much better. I just need to work on my plating skills now!
Roast chicken with grilled capsicum, zucchini and confit garlic, thrice cooked kipfler potatoes.
Rocket and walnut pesto salmon with roasted cherry tomatoes, pumpkin and onion, snow peas and quinoa salad
So kudos to the team at Yes Chef and the Grand Pacific Group. Knowing that business can keep on rolling at one of their locations makes me smile. It was only last Friday we were at Sergeants Mess just before the news of an impending lockdown. If you’re at home reading this, take a look at some of their meal delivery options. If you’re a couple looking for a wedding venue – it’s a great opportunity to roadtest the menu and experience how fantastic the food is for yourself. We have another week and a half left of time to kill.
Bon Apetit!
