Jimi Famurewa’s pick of the DIY meal kits from London’s top restaurants

Blushing slabs of brisket: Smokestak’s DIY kit
Jimi Famurewa @jimfam13 November 2020

In many ways, restaurant meal kits — assembled with varying degrees of ineptitude — were the one true constant of my first lockdown. Yes, there was the NHS pot-banging, the daily alarm clock of children complaining about having to do Joe Wicks, and some legendarily chaotic, globe-spanning family Zoom calls that generally devolved into lots of Nigerians yelling about the muting of microphones.  

But, mostly, the regular punctuation to those shapeless weeks was me trying to get a chef’s YouTube instructional video to work with a mass of tiny tubs littering the worktop. Me, turning out the sort of lumpen, haphazardly cooked versions of Dishoom bacon naans that I would send back if I were served them in a restaurant. And me wondering, on more than one occasion, if the real function of these kits was that they made you all the more grateful for professional chefs.

Which is to say, as we settle into winter confinement — aka Lockdown 2: This Time It’s Purgatorial — I can understand why people wouldn’t be thrilling to the prospect of more ‘finish-at-home’ boxes. However, the slick, carefully calibrated delivery market of the autumn is a different beast to the understandably frantic fridge-clearing effort of spring.  

This phenomenon won’t be for everyone. If someone taking ‘the hard work’ out of making a slow-bubbled, wintry stew sounds, to you, suspiciously like they’ve also done the meditative, fun bit then these packages will be a frustrating halfway house. You will be better off firing up a delivery app.

This advice also applies if you want something instantly. Most of these luxe ready meal platforms — which include Corbin & King’s typically beautiful online hub for bung-it-in versions of The Wolseley’s Wiener schnitzel and The Delaunay’s mushroom stroganoff — need you to book orders at least a couple of days in advance. They are, generally, the stuff of a planned special occasion.

Corbin & King’s wiener schnitzel

Certain dishes suit the format better. The impulse is to lean into celebratory, laborious things you couldn’t possibly pull off at home; which means beef Wellington from Adam Handling’s Hame or the mad decadence of eating Gymkhana’s Michelin-starred wild muntjac biryani in novelty slippers and elasticated loungewear.

But ordinary as it may seem, fresh pasta (whether Pophams’ pork, fennel and chilli ragu or the undeniable lasagne from cult, south London sibling restaurants Artusi and Marcella) almost always bangs. Smokestak’s blushing slabs of brisket attain a miraculous quality when pulled from your knackered home oven. And I can confirm that The Quality Chop House’s confit potatoes hold on to their brilliance even if you’ve turned them into a tragic, collapsed rosti-pile.

The key is to embrace the anarchic weirdness of this moment; to pour out a batched cocktail, muddle through the instructions and bring a bit of much-needed glamour and ceremony to meals that would normally be conducted in the half glow of a so-so Netflix show. The restaurant meal kit will never replace the actual restaurant, but give yourself over to it and it can be a thrill in its own right.

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