The Nukitchen steams up

NUKITCHENFOOD.COM

"MORE PEOPLE ARE looking for dining alternatives to cooking at home," Mark Newhouse, a well-groomed fellow with bright white teeth and stylish glasses, informs me. Newhouse is one of two young founders of six-month-old NuKitchen, a meal delivery service that drops off a day's worth of food, five days a week, at your doorstep.

So what's new about that? In New York City, virtually every restaurant delivers. Turn on your computer and you can order your groceries to your home. And while the country is experiencing a prepared-food boom, the gargantuan prepared food section at Manhattan's largest and most talked about supermarket, the Whole Foods at the Time Warner Building, leads the pack as a veritable yuppie trough.

Rather than being new, NuKitchen is an amalgam of sorts, borrowing elements of the existing services plus adding a few of its own to create a unique product. Like the restaurant or grocery store, NuKitchen will deliver to your door. Like the web grocer, you can sign up over the internet and schedule your food delivery for a specific day. And like Whole Foods, NuKitchen cooks using mostly organic ingredients, and tries in earnest to buy from high-quality purveyors. While NuKitchen does not overtly bill itself as a diet regimen, it does offer two weight-watching services: an in-house nutritionist as well as portion control.

When I visited the NuKitchen headquarters, located close to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, five or so workers were spread out in the neat industrial kitchen, avidly prepping for the hundreds of meals they were to churn out that day.

"Look," says Newhouse, pointing to a metal tray lined with rows of crisp bacon. "We use organic Applegate Farm turkey bacon."

Bryan Janeczko, NuKitchen's second half, comes out from the walk-in refrigerator brandishing a packet of organic pita bread. "Just because something is wheat," he tells me, "it doesn't mean it's healthy." He runs his finger instructively along the words on the label: stone ground whole wheat.

Earlier in the week, I had sampled a full day of NuKitchen, whose menus are based on lean proteins, whole grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts. Breakfast was scrambled eggs with ground turkey, chopped tomatoes and some fruit. Lunch: sliced pork with asparagus and roasted mixed potatoes. Dinner was lentil salad with mixed greens and spicy shrimp. The batch that I tasted, while very fresh, could have used more overall flavor.

For $34.99 a day, NuKitchen gets you a morning drop-off of three meals and two snacks. If you take a peek at the website, you'll see that NuKitchen has already rationalized the cost for you. According to their breakdown, one day of their meal plan amounts to less than the price of a latte and scone, a half pint of Ben & Jerry's, a sandwich with a bag of chips and some Chinese takeout.

"Even if someone doesn't like it," says Janeczko. "It's going to be good for you."