Locale Review

This meal delivery service has a complete new concept, but does it work?

I have been using Locale for about a year. In its original concept, it delivered meals prepared by local restaurants for you to reheat. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Locale announced that it was changing concepts altogether. Rather that delivering restaurant-prepared meals, it would prepare the meals themselves. They promised the meals would be “healthier” and they raised both meal prices and the price of delivery. They seem to want to compete with Factor, rather than with a local service such as Shef.

I tried the new concept – mostly because I still had over $100 in a gift certificate I needed to use – and while we liked a couple of meals, the lack of selection and the price led me to unsubscribe.

How it works

You subscribe to Locale and choose a plan of 4 to 12 individual meals to be delivered. You choose the specific meals you want to get by Friday and they are delivered to your house the following Monday.

Cost

The cost of each meals varies by how many you are subscribed to get. This ranges from $18.50 per meal when you subscribe to get 4 to $15 when you are subscribed to get 12. Delivery is an additional $10, and you need to pay a $1 deposit for the glass jars the meals come in. My initial 6-meal order came to $116.50 or about $19.50 per meal. That’s equivalent to a meal at a regular restaurant. There is no tax, however, as the meals are delivered cold.

Packaging & Delivery

The meals come in glass jars, which are placed in a cooler with a cardboard divider. A freezer pack keeps them cold. Locale picks up the cooler and jars when it delivers a new order.

The Food

Locale offers only 20 meals which change monthly. I’d describe the meals as falling within modern American cuisine. Locale advertises the meals as being high in proteins – and they do have generous portions of meats, so I believe that is true. Several of the meals I got, however, were also very high in starches – which are not particularly healthy. In all, these are large plates of food, though probably not large enough for two meals.

Locale also advertises the ingredients as being organic and the meats as being “pasture raised, grass fed, wild caught,” – but I take this claim with a grain of salt. For example, their chicken might be organic, but it’s not “pasture raised,” – it comes from Petaluma Poultry, a factory farming operation which doesn’t offer pasture raised chicken and has been accused of animal abuse. Its “Rocky” and “Rosie” brands are available at supermarkets.

How long the food keeps

Each meal had a “best buy” date which was 3 to 5 days after delivery. Everything was still fresh when we consumed it within this time period.

Making changes & cancelling

While their website is sparse and annoying to use – sometimes requiring multiple log ins -, making changes is quite easy. You can change how many meals your subscription to a smaller or larger amount of meals – the latter brings down the per-meal price. You can also easily skip weeks.

Cancelling was easy but confusing. When you go to the cancel page, there is a button that says “Pause my subscription”. If you click on it, it gives you a choice to “cancel,” instead. However, if you choose “cancel,” it takes you to another page. The trick is to not click on that button and simply provide the reason for cancelling.

Customer Service

Customer service has been pretty good, they respond by e-mail within a couple of days.

The Meals

Sesame Crusted Wild Tuna with Cold Peanut Soba Noodle Salad and Bok Choy

My husband enjoyed this dish very much. The salad had a variety of textures, which were brought together by the tasty, spicy peanut sauce. While the sauce was spicy in itself, it mellowed when mixed in with the rest. The tuna was flavorful and fresh, and this was overall a good dish. My husband thought it was worth the price, given that it was a generous portion.

Thai Organic Chicken Coconut Curry with Bone Broth Brown Rice and Thai Basil Leaves

This was another disappointing dish. The curry was light, bright and tasty, but ultimately underdeveloped. It didn’t reach the yuminess of your run of the mill Thai yellow curry. The chicken was cooked separately, and cut into very small pieces, probably to disguise its dryness and lack of flavor. The problem is that it then had no texture to add to the dish. The brown rice was fine. I did like the basil leaves on top, they added an extra element of freshness to the dish, but it probably could have used more. While the portion was sufficient, in all I felt this dish was too expensive for what it was. For the same price, I can get a much yummier yellow curry at any Thai restaurant.

Organic Chicken and Green Tea Piccata with Bone Broth Barley Risotto, and Roasted Rainbow Carrots

This dish was almost identical to the Thai chicken dish above, except that it came with a “green tea piccata” sauce, and it had carrots and spinach leaves instead of basil. The chopped chicken breast was the same, probably from the same batch, but here the sauce was too thin and too sparse to actually hide the dryness and lack of flavor of the chicken. The carrots were fine, but the raw, undressed spinach leaves added nothing. Who wants to eat raw spinach leaves? I did like the piccata sauce, even if I couldn’t really tell it had green tea in it, but there wasn’t enough of it to soak all of the rice in addition to the chicken. And once again, this was a very starch heavy dish – which makes it not at all healthy. I’m afraid I’ll be hungry again once my body processes all the sugars in the starches. I’d definitely not order this again – indeed, I only ate it because I was hungry and I had already paid for it (and almost $20!). I definitely wouldn’t order it again.

Grass-Fed Steak Fajitas Salad Bowl with Avocado Tomatillo Crema

I wasn’t fond of this dish, but this is partly my fault. I should have looked more carefully at the ingredients before ordering it. The main problem was that I am not a fan of most of the ingredients in the salad. I find lettuce hearts too crunchy, raw bell peppers and raw onions too strong and I just don’t like the texture of black beans. The tomatoes, which I normally do like, weren’t ripe enough. The avocado tomatillo crema was pretty good, but too spicy for me. Probably my favorite part of the salad were the pepitas.

As for the meat, when I read “fajitas,” I expect slices of medium-rare skirt or flank steak. That’s what was shown in Locale photo of this dish. Instead, I got cubes of what I think is probably top round – the meat was pretty lean, but it lacked the fiber and the chewiness I like in beef. The marinade was pretty tasty, however. This is not a dish I’d order again.

Grass Fed Steak Plate with Roasted Rainbow Carrots, Heirloom Marble Potatoes, and Chimichurri

Locale has been selling a similar dish out of its Tenderleaf kitchen, so there weren’t many surprises here. First, there was a lot of food. The portion of steak was perfectly adequate for dinner, and there were enough carrots and potatoes to feed an army. The few spinach leaves, however, seemed to be there pro forma.

Unfortunately, both the steak and “veggies” were unseasoned (or severely underseasoned); I’m someone who prefers to salt food before it’s cooked. The steak was tender and chewy enough, without having too much gristle, but I really didn’t like the taste. The chimichurri did a god job of hiding it, but what’s the point of eating steak then? The chimichurri sauce was fine, it had that acidic tone that most American chimichurris have, but there was nothing to complain about it. In all, it was a competent meal if not particularly noteworthy. I wouldn’t order it again, because it’s simply not worth the price and because pan grilling a steak is very easy and gives you better results.

Puerto Rican Grass Fed Beef Shepherd’s Pie with Okinawa Sweet Potatoes and Arugula Salad

This was an interesting dish. I wouldn’t classify it as a “shepherd’s pie” as it wasn’t a pie and didn’t have mashed potatoes; it was more of a picadillo mixed in with sliced sweet potatoes, peas and other undistinguishable ingredients. It had a gritty, interesting texture that my husband liked better than I. The flavor, however, was all there. It was bright and citrusy and very balanced. The arugula came with a lemon curd vinaigrette which was also pretty tasty. In all, a pretty good dish. My husband would order it again.

I have unsubscribed from Locale and don’t expect to try it again, given their very high prices.