Wouldn’t it be awesome if instead of having to go food shopping every week and prep a ton of food, someone just dropped a week’s worth of healthy, vegan meals on your doorstep? Uh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Enter Splendid Spoon. The plant-based meal subscription service makes healthy eating crazy easy with a huge selection of fruit- and veggie-packed smoothies, soup and grain bowls, noodle bowls, and even reset meals to help you get back to baseline after you overdid it on donuts or pizza on the weekend.
But how good is the whole thing really? Here’s an inside look at how it works, what makes it great, plus where it might fall a little short. And of course, whether it’s really worth buying in to.
The pros and cons
Quick look: The pros
- super convenient
- saves major time so you don’t have to shop, prep, or cook
- meals are seriously good-for-you and will keep you satisfied
- lots of variety to choose from
- packaging is recyclable
- can customize your weekly menus
Quick look: The cons
- food isn’t the most delicious and the texture isn’t awesome
- costs more than cooking at home
- food can only be delivered on Wednesdays or Fridays
The deets: How does it work?
Customizability is the name of the game here. Choose from four weekly plans, pick the meals you want delivered each week (or let Splendid Spoon do the work by following their weekly menus), and hit order.
Then sit back and relax — your food will be delivered on Wednesday or Friday fully chilled in dry ice and recyclable insulation.
Splendid Spoon plans include:
- Breakfast: 5 smoothies for $65
- Breakfast + Lunch: 5 smoothies and 5 soup & grain bowls for $75
- Breakfast, Lunch + Reset: 5 smoothies, 5 soup & grain bowls, plus a day’s worth of Reset meals — which consist of light veggie-based soups — for $115.
- Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner + Reset: 5 smoothies, 5 soup & grain bowls, 5 noodle bowls, and 5 Reset meals for $165.
The food: What you get
Splendid Spoon’s meals are all vegan, gluten-free, and non-GMO, packed with good stuff like fruits and veggies, whole grains, beans/legumes, and nuts and seeds.
The food comes ready-to-eat, so all you have to do is thaw and reheat. You can get the ingredient lists and nutrition info online before you order, but everything’s listed right on the packaging too.
The meals come in four categories and within each category there’s loads of variety.
Smoothies
Designed to fill you up for breakfast, the blended drinks are low in sugar and packed with superfoods.
Pick from 16 options including Pumpkin Spice with cinnamon and allspice, Mango Guava with camu camu and lime, and Mint Chip with cacao nibs and almond butter. The slim plastic bottles are super portable.
Soup and grain bowls
Satisfying enough to power you through the afternoon without weighing you down, these bowls are the kind of thing you wish you could find at the corner deli or café.
Pick from 30 options including the Roasted Cauliflower Bowl with za’tar spiced chickpeas and lemon tahini sauce, the Vegetable Bolognese Bowl with mushrooms and wild rice risotto, and the Green Goddess Quinoa Bowl with spinach and asparagus.
They come in microwave-safe containers for easy heatin’ and eatin’.
Noodle bowls
Designed to be enjoyed for dinner, these bowls are cozy and comforting without being heavy. Each has a rice noodle base, plenty of veggies, and sauces that are both wholesome and flavorful.
Pick from six options including Creamy Butternut Squash Noodles with broccoli and turmeric, Sesame Noodles with shiitakes and collard greens, and Kale Pesto Noodles with roasted tomatoes and plant-based Parmesan. Like the soup and grain bowls, they come in microwave-safe containers.
Reset meals
Light and veggie-loaded, these sippable soups are meant to give your system a reset in just one day.
Choose from five options including Pumpkin Pear Bisque with hempseeds and cardamom, Butternut Turmeric Soup with sweet potatoes and nutmeg, or Fennel Consomme with sea salt and dill. Have them warm or chilled, right out of the bottle.
Taste test: Is it good?
Splendid Spoon’s menu definitely reads like a cool plant-based restaurant inspired by global flavors. The meals score big points for variety, both in terms of the flavor combos and the loads of different ingredients they use.
(Would you attempt Moroccan-spiced buckwheat, aloo gobi, butternut squash ratatouille, and spicy red curry noodles all in a single week? Probably not.)
But the food itself isn’t mind-blowing. Many of the soup and grain bowls and the noodle bowls manage to taste both sort of flat and overpowering at the same time. In other words, you’ll sometimes get hit with one big taste and not much else.
The Red Curry Noodles with Sweet Potatoes and Thai Basil is just spicy, for instance, while the Sesame Noodles with Shiitake Mushroom bowl slams you with tahini.
The smoothies are better. They’re sweet without being saccharine, and the veggie-loaded drinks mostly taste fruity instead of lawn-like.
You can pick out the individual ingredients — the AB&J smoothie with banana and baobab really does have an almond butter and jelly sandwich vibe, and the Mint Chip is legit like a good-for-you version of mint chip ice cream.
Texture is a little bit of an issue with all the meals though. The noodles get a little dry and rubbery when they’re reheating, and the grain bowls feel a little watery.
It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, so long as you manage your expectations from the get-go: These are frozen microwaveable meals, so they’re not going to be quite like if you ordered the same thing fresh (or made it yourself).
Same goes for the smoothies. The drinks have that slightly clumpy texture that you get from a blended sipper after it has some time to settle. Shaking the bottle helps, but you’re not getting that texture of a smoothie that came fresh from the blender.
Overall, the food is OK but not great. The smoothies are definitely more delicious than the meals, but the freezing-and-thawing means the texture could be better all around.
Extras to love
If the above sounds harsh, don’t let it discourage you — Splendid Spoon scores big points elsewhere. It’s awesome because:
- The food is super nutritious. You’ll have no trouble hitting your daily fruit and veg quotas with these meals. They’re also packed with fiber, protein, and healthy fats to keep you full, so you’ll feel really good after eating and probably won’t be tempted to snack on junk in between meals.
And if you love superfoods (hey, chia seeds and spirulina!) you’ll get your fill here, especially with the smoothies. - Shipping is free and easy. Meals are delivered on Wednesdays or Fridays via FedEx, who should provide you with a delivery window. Splendid Spoon ships to 48 states (sorry, Alaska and Hawaii), and no matter where you live, you won’t pay extra to have the goods brought to your door.
- It’s packed well. Your food comes packed up in a recyclable cardboard box with recyclable insulation and dry ice. It’ll still be mostly frozen when it gets to you, though you might notice that some of the items are starting to thaw. (So get it into the freezer ASAP.)
- It’s easy to store. Speaking of storage, the food definitely takes up less space than an entire week’s worth of groceries. The bowl and noodle containers stack neatly in the freezer and the smoothie bottles are relatively compact. (All are plastic, but also recyclable.)
- The meals are easy to store and prep. You can microwave the bowls and noodles directly in their containers — just pause to stir once or twice. But if you’re not a fan of heating in plastic, you can also pop the food onto a plate or bowl and warm it up that way.
In both cases you can heat right from the freezer, but it’ll be faster if you thaw the food in the fridge overnight. For the smoothies, all you have to do is thaw and eat.
The verdict: Is it worth it?
Splendid Spoon is an awesome option if you want fast, easy access to healthy, plant-based meals without having to spend time shopping, prepping, or cooking.
The cost is definitely more than cooking all your food yourself (though not that much more if you did most of your shopping at a high-end market and bought mostly organics), but you win back big on time savings. And it’s definitely better for you than ordering out every day.
While there’s plenty of variety to pick from, taste-wise, it’s obvious you’re eating frozen, microwaved meals — and there’s really only so much science can do in that department without relying on preservatives and a butt load of salt. If nutrition and convenience are your top priorities, you’ll be super happy with Splendid Spoon.
Think you want to give it a try? Head on over to SplendidSpoon.com to explore the plans and place your first order.
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