Dream Dinners

My friend Meredith and I tried Dream Dinners today. After eating the food for dinner tonight I thought a little feedback was merited. The whole experience was well organized. You set up an appointment time and order and prepay for all your meals ahead of time, and are given the option of ordering 3 or 6 serving portions. I would prefer that they did a four or five serving option, because three servings was not enough, even for my family of four pretty small eaters, and six would be too much. Also, you really only get your meat course and maybe a rice side. Not a whole lot of vegetarian choices.

Preparation is easy. You walk in and they give you a print out of all the stuff you ordered. All the ingredients are laid out with a station for each different dish they offer that month. Everything is pre-chopped and measuring is easy. Each meal takes five to ten minutes to prepare, and they provide you with Ziploc bags to hold and separate ingredients and preprinted labels to tell you what the meal is and how to cook it. The place was a little crowded and chaotic, and despite stern warnings to NOT brings your kids, some guy had his two rowdy toddlers running around with the staff pretty much forced to babysit them. Not cool in my opinion. After you are finished all your prep, they load everything up on a cart and wheel it out to your car for you. The staff was friendly and helpful. Oh, and very perky.

They provide you with a little checklist of all the stuff you ordered. They also provide you with side order suggestions and the general cooking method and prep time needed to cook the stuff. Don't be like me and forget to leave time for the thawing step. The food was very tasty. We had southwestern grilled chicken, which I served with my own Mexican rice and salad. We also had peach cobbler which was TASTY!

Overall, I was impressed. I won't make a weekly or even monthly ritual of this because a) I like to cook, b) I already have most of these ingredients on hand, c) it didn't really save me ALL that much time, d) it was a little on the spendy side. I do think it would be really fun to go back and do a private party there with a bunch of friends and a bottle of wine.