Sure, the professionally-made food you find in restaurants and eateries is delicious and fun, but sometimes you want the same food right in your own home. Around the city, there is a movement percolating of home cooks inviting strangers over for intimate dinners, along with delivery options of homemade meals and baked goods. Here are some of the latest:
This service is based in the SF Bay Area (to start), offering a marketplace of meals, cooking classes, and market tours. The chefs are vetted by the Cozymeal team, and they now only feature professional chefs and cooks. I attended an intimate dinner in a charming apartment in North Beach, and the host even sent us home with leftovers. Awww. Bonus: one of the meals they offer is a Singaporean street food feast on a boat in the Berkeley Marina!
With destinations around the world, EatWith can be a lot of fun for solo travelers looking to meet people and try authentic dishes in a city you’re visiting. But it’s also a great way to meet new people in your hometown. The meals seem a bit more thematic than on other sites, from singles oyster parties to paella dinners to a vegetarian Indian supper, and some also include cooking classes. The suggested donations average around $25–$40 in SF. The EatWith app makes it especially easy to use.
This is another home-cooking site with international destinations. An Evening in Madrid (featuring Manchego frito, grass-fed beef meatballs in smoked paprika and red wine sauce, and creama Catalan) seems particularly noteworthy. There's even a dinner for paleo diners. On the flip side, price clocks in a bit more, at about $60—but wine pairing is also included.
This SF-based site has some of the most creative meals, including one that Tamar Adler (author of An Everlasting Meal) would approve of: A Damn Food Waste Dinner, where everyone brings their wilted or tired vegetables and they make make a meal out of it (and, yes, the reviews are good!). Too crunchy for you? Feastly also offers pizza parties, Filipino lunches, Malaysian brunches, and more for all kinds of budgets.
This site can get dangerous. It’s far too easy to get gorgeous cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, damn good whoopie pies, cupcakes, and a whole lot more delivered right to your front door. Doughbies has some fantastic bakers on their site, which acts as an online marketplace connecting local home bakers to San Franciscans with a sweet tooth. You can read about each of the bakers and their personal stories, and know that each of them have been vetted by a team of tasters. So, those goodies you’re looking at? Yeah, they’re damn good.
If you want a break from the usual delivery—or maybe you’re craving something regional and homey, like goulash with spätzle, or lasagna, or vegetable pulao—then Cookunity is worth a look. Home cooks from around the city make a variety of (mostly) affordable dishes, and some even deliver up to 10 blocks of their home, or even citywide. Now, some of the menu offerings are a little ridiculous (come on, you can make a butternut squash quesadilla at home!), but some are a godsend. Jambalaya? Now we’re talkin’. Worried about food handling? Here’s how they manage it.
Marcia Gagliardi is the founder of the weekly tablehopper e-column; subscribe and get more food news and gossip at tablehopper.com. Follow her on Twitter: @tablehopper.
