Have lunch without leaving your office
Moroccan Dreams... yummy and good for you, perfect combo. — Pictures by Eu Hooi KhawKUALA LUMPUR, Aug 17 — Lunch arrived at my house at 12.45pm, from lunch2U.my, a new lunch delivery service in the Klang Valley. It was healthy food to look forward to, and it looked colourful and promising even in their plastic boxes.
There was Moroccan Dreams, a couscous and chickpea salad with cherry tomatoes, mint, red pepper, onion and cucumber tossed with lemon juice and olive oil. A salad for lunch? Not to worry, it was certainly substantial enough, especially with the chickpeas in it, to banish the hunger pangs and keep me comfortably full till dinner. It was minty, tangy and tasted good. And all of it added up to just 377 calories!
The Thai Journey hit the spot with my two friends. It’s a red rice salad with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, shallots and mango, tossed with a sweet, hot and sour Thai dressing. It was topped with strips of baked chicken breast. There were punches of fragrance with the kaffir lime leaf in it, as well as lemongrass. The lean chicken strips on top were designed to fill you up. It was only 511 calories.
We moved on to Pasta Pasta, a tri-coloured pasta with tuna, red and yellow peppers, oyster mushrooms and shallots, and brought together with a lemon vinaigrette with mustard in it.
My only issue with this was that the pasta was too soft. An al dente pasta would have worked so much better in this 505-calorie meal. The Lunch2U people have promised to rectify this.
Love Me Tandoor was what I loved best. It’s a capati wrap with big pieces of tandoori chicken laced with raita, chilli, onions and lettuce. The capati — made with wholewheat flour — was delicious. I bit through the capati into the yoghurt with mint and cilantro, juicy tandoori chicken, chilli and spice. A burst of cumin gave it a delightful lift. I felt satisfied after having just one-third of it. Surprisingly it has the least calories of the four – only 311.
Love Me Tandoor... very satisfying and low in calories.And how many calories do you need a day? Well, it varies with the amount of exercise you do, your age and whether you are male or female. For me it would be 1,500 calories a day. If I had the Love Me Tandoor and the Moroccan Dreams, the calorie count would have been just 688 calories but I wouldn’t have been able to finish the food.
lunch2U.my is a lunch delivery service that started just two months ago. It’s about healthy lunches you can eat every day, instead of having greasy food at the mamak or at the chap fan stall.
Lunch is delivered neatly right up to your doorstep.The lunches are low in fat, high in nutrients and fibre. There are always vegetables of different colours in them, even fruit. Red rice is used, as in the Thai Journey and wholewheat flour for the capati. Healthy also means flavourful and delicious, and no one is more conscious of this than Alexandra Prabaharan, a certified nutritionist with the American Fitness Professionals and Associates (AFPA), who designed the dishes. Alexandra used to be the food editor for Friedchillies Media where she wrote food articles, hosted food shows, and There is a list of service areas in the lunch2u website. There isn’t a minimum order if your building is listed in these service areas. “If you’re not located in our service areas we require bulk orders. We do not charge for delivery,” said Alexandra.
“We definitely plan to add new dishes and eventually drinks and desserts too. We’ll be launching a tempeh sandwich next week which will have a curry marinated tempeh, roasted pumpkin puree, and oven baked tomatoes served on bran bread.”
The lunch delivery service has garnered many loyal supporters who order a few times a week. “We mainly stick to offices and we want to tap into the office meeting catering market. This is an option for busy office employees to have a lunch delivered to their desk that is nutritionally sound.”
Just browse the menu on lunch2u.my, order and pay. The lunches have to be ordered a day in advance, and will be delivered between 11.30am and 1pm. For the time being it is servicing Damansara Heights offices, certain Mont Kiara buildings, Phileo Damansara 1&2. The lunches can also be picked up at itsk itchen in Desa Sri Hartamas.
The food is reasonably priced too. It’s RM12.90 for the Moroccan Dreams, Thai Journey and Pasta Pasta. Love Me Tandoor is RM11.90. Two types of sandwiches — Egg-centric and Skinny Spicy – are only RM10.90 each. A meal at the coffee shop and a drink would have cost nearly as much. And we all know the nutritional value (or lack of) in that, right?
