CHENNAI: Have you ever channelled your inner Fleabag and wished for someone to tell you what to eat every day? If you’re someone like me forced to fend for yourself while having the appetite of a humming bird but not nearly the cooking and/or monetary skills to sustain it you’re sure to have gone one step ahead and wished for someone to supply you with the recommended meals as well. Lucky for us, from home-based outfits to corporate giants, there are quite a few businesses that saw the potential in our demographic. The latest, exciting addition to this industry is Food Darzee. Having satisfied many a customer in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad with tailor-made nutritional meals, Chennai seemed to be the next natural destination, says Anirudh Ganeriwal, its co-founder, and you find yourself agreeing, don’t you?
“We had all the groundwork ready and we felt that we didn’t need to wait for the pandemic to end to launch this. Besides, in the pandemic, there are a lot of people looking for permanent vendors because they don’t really have a lot of access to health (food). To have a service like this that takes care of all your stress in terms of managing your meals and nutrition would work well, we thought. Basically, there is no need to run your kitchen at home once you subscribe to Food Darzee. We are like your personal nutritionist who also provides you the food,” he explains, describing the company’s modus operandi and capturing the attention of many like us all in one breath.
No dearth of options
And it’s as simple as it gets, while also giving you a world of options. Getting started, you pick the way you want the subscription to work for you, deciding between the goals of Weight Loss, Healthy Eating, Improve Immunity and Muscle Gain. It then offers you one of five subscription verticals — Ketogenic, Low Carb, Balanced, Vegan, and Homestyle. Alternatively, you can forgo these and let the nutritionist pick a plan for you. After this, you decide how many meals per day (breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner) you’d like and for how many days and voila, your personal subscription would be up and running.
“We assign you a personal nutritionist, who chalks out a plan for you and the food given to you is exactly as per the plan. That is why the results are extremely great. If you ask for 1,500 calories with say 30 per cent protein and 20 per cent fat, you’ll get your meal exactly like that. And the food you get will be very tasty; like you can have pizza and butter chicken and still achieve your fitness goals,” he elaborates.
And that is another reason why you might find Food Darzee to be quite an attractive option. While you have familiar comforts like butter chicken with kulcha (low carb), Hyderabadi biryani, shawarma bowl and BBQ chicken, you also have incredibly appealing options like quinoa beetroot upma, zucchini noodles in pesto, Caribbean brown rice salad and calzones!
While a school of nutritionists believe that the best way to healthy eating and even weight loss/gain is through regional food that uses seasonal ingredients, Food Darzee believes in a much more cosmopolitan approach to addressing one’s nutritional needs. Sticking to the rule of burning more calories than you consume would do plenty towards weight management, he says, adding that their clients see it that way too. “The only thing that matters with regional food is probably there is a palette difference that happens. People in Chennai could prefer south Indian food more than people in Mumbai. But, we really haven’t witnessed such trends. All our meals are customisable, and anyway we have backup options,” he points out.
Hygiene in good hands
With the pandemic raging on, the average customer’s attention to hygiene has only increased. But, Food Darzee has this covered long before they had to worry about meeting Covid safety standards, says Anirudh. Their system already worked with fast freezing food to preserve its nutrients and leave no room for bacterial growth in the transition from the kitchen to the customer’s table. Hence, the food is cooked above 70 degree Celsius and they blast-chill it down to 5 degree Celsius within 19 minutes. “That is the method we’ve always followed. Besides this, everyone wears a head cap, gloves and such. With the pandemic, everyone has to wear a mask. We always sanitise our vegetables; we have pest control in place. We didn’t have to change much since the pandemic,” he shares.
If that checks all your boxes, Anirudh also points out that their nutritionists are just a call away to clear any doubts you may have. While that handles the ‘grown up’ side of the arrangement, he appeals to your gourmet alter ego and adds that your subscription will have no food repeating over a course of four weeks — unless you want it repeating, of course. Well, what more can you ask for?
Price of meal subscription plans start from Rs 4,350 (one meal a day for five days).
For more details, visit: fooddarzee. com or follow Instagram page: @food.darzee