based on 10 reviews
Neighbors say
- Has healthy, nutritious food that doesn't taste like cardboard
MagicKitchen.com
174 Frederick Court
Los Altos, CA
94022
(877) 516-2442
info@magickitchen.com
http://www.magickitchen.com
By: Rita
Date: July, 2007
Magic Kitchen has a 5-star website: tasty, fresh-looking food pictures, well-organized, simple to navigate, with easy-to-find answers. The shipping policy and schedule were easy to figure out, and there was a nice sketch of the packing cooler with a reassurance that the food will keep until I get home, which it did.
The nutrition facts are neatly presented in a familiar food label format. There were some nutrition surprises – both positive and negative.
After scouting out all the choices I settled on the First Time Customer Sample, which is an incredible value. I would have preferred the chocolate Ganache cake for dessert rather than a double order of the 73% DV of saturated fat Panna Cotta. I did order the cake as an afterthought, hoping that the serving size is bigger than what’s shown in the picture. (It was.)
Ordering: I entered all the shipping/credit card info, then wanted to add that Ganache Cake. I hit the oops button, added the item, but on return to the shipping page all my info was blank and had to be reentered. Argh. There was no privacy policy for my email address, etc. Will I get promotional email? (Yes.) Will they sell my info to a 3rd party? (Don’t know.)
After completing the ordering process I was left with one burning question: Can a frozen meal really look & taste as fresh and freshly assembled as those pictures?...
…No, with a few exceptions. My biggest advice is to hide the food from anyone who hasn’t been influenced by the pretty pictures until it’s in your pretty serving dishes. My husband saw the food as it came out of the microwave and asked if we were having airplane food for dinner. Some of it (particularly the Lemon Pepper Chicken and the Saffron Rice) I would have gladly traded for a United Airlines meal. (Ugh!) The Sliced Turkey with Gravy had a thin film of dry gravy on top – not very appetizing. The Beef Tri-tip Roast was acceptable.
Favorites: the Eggplant Parmesan was delicious with its small layer of pesto hidden in the middle. The Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo was good, too. Broccoli crepes were acceptable. The Green Beans with Mushroom Sauce were good but swimming in sauce. No worries, the leftover sauce was enough for two more meals of steamed French green beans. The desserts were all fantastic. Cakes, brownies and Panna Cotta don’t suffer from being frozen.
Magic Kitchen’s customer service was very responsive. I thought I screwed something up on the order page and called them the next day to confirm that I wasn’t being overcharged. They returned my call promptly by message and email – everything turned out fine.
Summary: pick your meals carefully and plan ahead – it’s frozen on arrival. Considering the quality and convenience (these are not complete full-course meals, you still have to make a side dish) the value is questionable. You might consider ordering foods you don’t usually cook so the taste won’t disappoint.
By: Beth T
Date: June, 2007
The ultimate in convenience....delivered frozen to the door in a styrofoam cooler. The meals were very good with a few meals being exceptional. Our family favorites include the Eggplant Parmigiana, Shrimp Fettucini Alfredo, Chicken Pot Pie, Seasoned Baby Back Ribs, Corn Medley and for dessert the Lemon Loaf is just wonderful! Quick to prepare with easy clean up!
By: rsneighbor
Date: June, 2007
I'd have to agree with what Irena wrote. The web site and ordering process were well thought out. The delivery was smooth and all the food was well packed and still frozen, as promised. The problem is with the food itself, especially the main courses. It is no better than any frozen meals you would buy at Safeway or Trader Joes. We tried the teriyaki beef and tiger prawns with sauce. Neither was very tasty, especially the beef. The twice baked potatoes were pretty good.
Also, I found the prices quite high for the amount of food you get. I still have a couple of dishes in my freezer, but if they are similar to the beef and prawns then we will not be ordering again. It's too bad, because the service, ordering experience, etc. were excellent. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is the food quality, and that really didn't impress us.
By: Irena
Date: June, 2007
In the interest of full disclosure, I consider myself the Queen of Convenience - on a busy week night, I take pride not in "making it" (as in dinner from scratch) but in "making it possible." So perhaps it wasn't entirely fair to compare MagicKitchen.com to some of the frozen, canned, and pre-packaged foods at Trader Joe's, Costco, and Whole Foods.
That being said, I found the taste, presentation, and overall value of MagicKitchen was woefully inadequate in comparison. The menu choices (we chose Teriyaki Chicken, Broccoli-Zucchini Soup, Cheese Ravioli, chocolate ganache cake, gourmet artisan flatbread, and Red Snapper with Mediterranean Sauce) were fine. So was the ordering process - easy, accessible website, timely delivery. However, the food – except for the flatbread and the ravioli - was barely edible. The teriyaki chicken was dry, with a thin, gray-colored sauce that tasted nothing like teriyaki; the broccoli soup tasted like salt and preservatives, and had a sharp pepper after burn in the back of your throat. The red snapper was pretty much inedible - stringy, dry, with a sauce that separated upon reheating.
Just about all the food has to be thawed before cooking, which involves far more foresight than I'm capable of mid-week. Sure, you get the convenience of food delivered to your front door - at a pretty hefty $15 delivery fee - but $9.29 for a two-serving package of cheese ravioli in tomato sauce (the only edible thing we've tried so far) is pretty steep. Certain items were fine - the chocolate ganache cake went over big with my kids - but at almost $6 for a two-serving portion, I'd rather get something at the local bakery or supermarket.
The bright side? The food makes you feel like a regular Martha Stewart. Just about anything you can whip up in your own kitchen, even if it involves sticking a straight-from-the-supermarket-freezer chicken pot pie in the microwave and sprinkling it with parsley before serving, is far superior and makes you look like a kitchen goddess. As Martha would say, “That, at least, is a good thing.”
By: Jacqueline
Date: June, 2007
This was the first time I'd ever tried anything like this and it proved to work well. I was a bit nervous about the texture of the potato skins being so thin then frozen/thawed, but they turned out good.
By: JM
Date: June, 2007
Order arrived the following day. The packaging was very study and the food was still fully frozen. Since we hadn't thawed our meal before cooking we needed to defrost in the microwave first and then cook it. We don't normally cook in the microwave and after our first experience understand why it's better to have the meal thawed first. The flavor was actually pretty good, better than expected. The carrot cake was yummy.
By: TiffanysMom
Date: June, 2007
I think that overall my Magic Kitchen experience was very good. Our order came in a convenient box that kept the food inside frozen. All of the food tasted very good and I liked how the website also provided nutritional facts for all their food so I knew what I was eating. The instructions on every food package were easy to follow and the food was easy to prepare. I think that the dessert we ordered, Chocolate Ganache Cake, Ricotta Cheesecake, U-Bake Apple Raisin Strudel, also tasted very good. Although there could have been more varieties of food, everything we ordered tasted delicious.
By: Sophia
Date: June, 2007
The website is well laid out and easy to follow - all websites should be as organized. Ordering was simple, but it would be nice to have a better tracking system, so you can find out exactly what day the food arrives and you don't have to cook. We ordered the Italian meal for two. Portions were a good size, as there was enough food to feed our family of four for three dinners. Food preparation details were very simple to follow. Some of the flavors (eg, the broccoli mushroom soup) were too sophisticated for the kids, but the adults liked them. Some foods needed some spicing up (a dash of salt; a few grinds of pepper; in my husband's case, some hot sauce - don't ask). If you enjoy cooking, you might think, "I can make this better myself." Maybe you can, but the meals are easy to heat and serve so what you might not get in taste you make up with convenience.
By: emily
Date: June, 2007
I found it very easy to order from Magic Kitchen's web site. I love the ingredient lists and nutrition facts for each dish. It allows me to pick the foods that meet my dietary needs. I emailed with a couple of questions, and they were very prompt in responding, helping me to make my meal choices. I am happy to see that they use some organic produce and that their salmon is wild. I'm also happy to see a Healthy Choices section and foods that are lower in sodium.
This Neighbor Says
- Has healthy, nutritious food that doesn't taste like cardboard
By: SusanPA
Date: June, 2007
The website is fantastic: intuitive, easy to use and full of information. The ordering process was incredibly easy as well, and the overnight shipping was amazing. I got a big first-time customer meal sampler with meals that required no menu planning other than remembering to defrost things in the morning, and to work out microwave times for sides dishes so that they'd be hot when the main dish came out of the oven. The kids loved the green beans and mushroom sauce, fettucine with shrimp, and the panna cotta (they want me to reorder that), but they hated the mint carrots, which had too much cayenne. The whole experience was incredibly easy, there was a lot of food for the money spent, and the best thing was the ease of putting a nutritious meal on the table. The food quality was also superior to TV dinners or any other frozen entrees.
