Let me introduce you to Cook My Wish! This is not just
another regular restaurant or a café, this is an inimitable culinary meet-up
concept and frankly speaking I am in love with this concept! Few weeks back I
was contacted by the owner of this place and I was introduced to this NEWLY
OPENED food-ordering portal through a food tasting session. CookMyWish is
actually an initiative with loads of positive social implications and it is
basically a website named “cookmywish.com”. This is a women-only home-chef portal
focused on Kolkata (as of now), dedicated to serving the needs of home-makers
and enabling them to benefit form the power of internet. Using a Technology-plus-Services
model, they are running an ‘Assisted Marketplace’ - where women, including
those who are not very familiar with the web technologies, can get a store up
and running with CookMyWish’s help. This is really an innovative concept and
many homemakers can make good use of their free time and can earn in this
process, which will in turn improve their emotional, social and financial
health. CookMyWish was started couple of months back with 3 chefs but now they
have 15+ chefs and bakers enrolled with them - serving a variety of cuisines –
starting from North Indian, Bengali, Chinese, South Indian to Thai, Japanese
and Continental. Their USP is HOME-COOKED; HOME DELIVERED which is really
crucial these days with not-too-healthy street-food invading our meals every
now and then! Also it is a boon for those who are staying away from home. You
need to just log on to their portal and let them know your ‘wish’, they will
‘cook’ as per your wish and deliver the food right at your door-steps – that is
Cook My Wish for you :)
USER INTERFACE OF THE PORTAL - - - - - I would like to start with my experience of their portal which is the basic platform here. The portal tells you that you get free home delivery and you can also opt for Cash on Delivery which is really encouraging. Let’s discuss about the UI or the User Interface. When you are at the home page of the website you can start your navigation either by going to the dropdown named ‘Browse Chef’s kitchen’ or by going to the dropdown ‘Menu’. It is best to browse by their Chefs, like I did. After a couple of orders you can be certain of the kind of food you wanna order from here. The UI is quite user friendly, though I believe there can be more options added here like ‘chef chat’ or ‘saving preferences’, etc. They also have a ‘Featured Dishes’ section which displays the popular dishes across all the kitchens with their pictures. Similarly they have a section called ‘featured chefs’ where you can go to the kitchen of your favorite chef directly by clicking on the picture of the chef, here it will be good if the pictures of all the chefs are in sync, i.e. with some similar background that gives an uniform feel. While you are placing the order, i.e. when you are in your Cart, they give you an option to mention your preferences/instruction for the chef like ‘cook with less oil’ or ‘make it less spicy’, etc. I really like this part and it is quite necessary as well. You can also pick your desired delivery date and time slot for convenience. Overall the website has all the ingredients to keeps the lights ON, but it can further be improved by more brain storming sessions and more user testings, also an Introduction (depicting the concept of CookMyWish) built with flash is required in the homepage which the user can choose to skip and proceed to the food ordering section.
FOOD DELIVERY and PACKAGING - - - - - The food delivery
part is really impressive. Though my food reached a bit late than the promised
time but the delivery person never called me up for directions, he was right at
my door-steps with the food. The person was very courteous and soft-spoken. The
packaging was good and quite usual, though there were no spillovers. The list
of the item names was clearly written on a container in a piece of paper which
was very helpful. CookMyWish offers complete logistics service covering the
entire Kolkata city; the delivery boys pick up food from the chefs and deliver
it to the customers.
FOOD TASTING - - - - - For this food tasting session I opted
for Continental food from a particular Chef’s Kitchen. The below food items
were delivered to me and I must say I have never tasted such amazing fusion-continental
food in last couple of years. Here are the items:
a) Carrot Tomato Soup with toast – This soup gave the
perfect start to the meal. It was as expected reddish orange in color and thick
in overall density. It tasted and looked great garnished with some minced
leaves; the taste was soothing and tad garlicky. The toast was perfect, brown, crispy
and crunchy. Overall the soup with the toast was quite filling.
b) Shrimp stuffed pumpkin flower fritters – This dish was
very innovative according to me and I was amazed by the overall taste it had to
offer. The pumpkin flower had a moderately thin skin and was generously stuffed
with shrimps and minced coriander leaves mixture. It was then deep fried but it
was not too oily which was really nice. The overall aroma and flavor was overwhelming.
An awesome starter. Must try!
c) Mutton Keema Sugarcane stick – I guess this dish again
redefined innovation in the food domain. I have never tasted anything close to
this before! The idea is really out of the box that sets you apart and creates
a positive impression in an instance. This dish comprised of fresh mutton keema
dough wrapped around a thin sliced sugarcane stick. The mutton keema was very
flavorful and you can bite into the sugarcane stick to get the sweet juice with
every bite of the keema jacket. The keema jacket had minced onion and coriander
leaves in it and was very tasty and aromatic. The chemistry between mutton
keema and sugarcane juice has been well explored! Kudos for that. The keema
jacket was so fresh and soft that it was falling apart with every bite. An
awesome dish. Must try!
e) Bekti in Orange Sauce – Though this shouldn’t have been
packed but still the final product which I received was very tasty, aromatic
and fresh. The dish had lovely fried and semi-fried chopped onions all over it.
The orange sauce was sweet and flavorful. The Bekti fish was well-prepared and
fresh, but it was a tad too fried causing slight chewiness. Though I liked that
texture as well, it can be made like melt-in-your-mouth texture but this variant
was also well accepted. Also I was provided with sautéed veggies like broccoli
and beans which were well prepared like they should be.
f) Drunken Bundi – It
was again a nice sweet dish, with bundi (which is a water droplet sized deep
fried crispy snack prepared from gram flour and few spices) dipped in a milky
liquid soaking it all up.
g) Daaber Payesh –
This was again one hell of an innovative sweet dish! I was thoroughly
impressed with this one. It was filled with coconut crumbs in sweet thickened
milk. It had the unadulterated aroma of tender coconut and tasted just like
tender coconut, it’s one flavor I absolutely love in sweet dishes. Awesome
sweet dish! Must try!
SUMMARY - - - - - Here are my granular ratings:
Food quantity: 4/5
Food quality: 4.5/5
Food Innovation: 5/5
Business Concept: 4.8/5
Value for money: 4/5
Website rating: 3.7/5
Delivery: 4/5
My OVERALL RATING comes to 4.3 out of 5 which is just
awesome according to my evaluation standards and history!
CONCLUSION - - - - - Since all the chefs at CookMyWish are
primarily housewives or rather homemakers with families they do need a day's
advance order. Food is never pre-cooked here; only after the order is received
through their website, the chef buys the ingredients and starts cooking, that
assures you the best quality and freshness in the ingredients used.
They not only provide a platform for homemakers but also
conduct regular checks of the kitchens and they know all their chefs personally
which assures you that nothing can go wrong and there is end-to-end support
available, if needed. CookMyWish also has regular tiffin service which is
surely a good news for students and professionals staying away from home.
I guess we should all step forward to support this humble
women-centric venture that has immense potential and can give any renowned
restaurant a run for their money in terms of taste, aroma and innovation of
dishes in this food domain. So I urge you to go ahead and place an order with
them, I am sure you will end up with a pleasant experience! :)
Cheers!
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