Goodbye to HelloFresh: A Food Review From the Girl Who Can’t Taste
Review by Nele Langhof
When I tell people that I can’t taste anything, their first reaction is always one of envy.
“Oh my god,” they say. “I would be so skinny if I couldn’t taste anything.”
Truth be told, I have lost a lot of weight, but that was probably much more due to the global pandemic inducing respiratory illness that ravaged my body for three weeks.
I contracted COVID in July of 2020, and I still haven’t fully recovered. I lost about twenty pounds, my ability to taste and smell, and the normal heart rhythm I had always taken for granted. The heart condition I can deal with; the weight I can gain back. The bit that has really taken the greatest toll on my mental and physical health is the fact that my favorite pasta dishes just feel like dead worms in my mouth, that rice feels like maggots and biting down on a grape is like squishing through the membrane of a juicy eyeball.
I describe my taste the way I’ve heard my blind co-worker describe her sight — I can make out the general shape of taste, but I’d never be able to tell you the difference between a blueberry and a chickpea. A few months ago, that same friend started raving about HelloFresh. The German meal-kit delivery company promises explosions of flavor and a diverse taste palette that could satisfy even the pickiest of eaters. I thought to myself: I’m German. I’m hungry. I hate going to the grocery store, and so for $62.93 I purchased my first week of HelloFresh meals, hoping that there would be something — anything — that I would be able to taste.
For my first week, I ordered the zucchini and mushroom bibimbap bowls, warm buttered shrimp rolls, and the buffalo-spiced chickpea bowls. I picked these meals very particularly. Zucchini used to be my absolute favorite vegetable, I’ve missed even the fishy smell of shrimp, and anything buffalo-spiced is fine by me. I thought I was setting HelloFresh up for an absolute slam dunk, and boy was I dead wrong. Even for someone with their full taste palette, these meals would have been an utter disappointment.
A box arrived for me about a week after I placed my first order. All of the ingredients were independently-packaged, many of which in recyclable material. I counted that as a plus, but the amount of waste created from the keep-cool freezer pouches was still audacious. I was mentally preparing for my meal to look like the photo on the beautiful full-color instruction card. That did not happen.
The zucchini and mushroom bibimbap bowls were soggy, and the recipe called for far too much rice. I’m the first to admit when I’ve done something wrong, and I’ll allow for the possibility of slight chef error here, but when the ONE carrot and ONE zucchini provided with the meal kit are both under 6 inches long, there’s an obvious problem. The ginger which was supposed to be provided in the kit was missing. Without the motivation to go to the store to fix the mistake of the company, I ordered takeout instead.
The warm buttered shrimp rolls were much better, though still completely tasteless. The shrimp were great in quantity but not in quality. Anyone who knows anything about shrimp knows that a fresh shrimp will crunch when bitten into. These shrimp were some of the softest and mushiest I have ever had to endure. The sauce was far too sweet, and the potato wedges were basically raw in the middle despite being cooked longer than prescribed at the correct temperature. Next!
I went into the buffalo-spiced chickpea bowls with an open mind. I had been able to taste the general shape of sweetness in shrimp sauce, so I was incredibly optimistic about the idea of having a good ole spicy chickpea bowl. With spice, you’re not supposed to be able to taste anything anyway right? Wrong. This was the weakest “spice” I’ve ever experienced in my whole life. I’ve gotten greater sensory stimulation from driving past the Purina cat food factory since July. The chickpeas were stale, and the scallions were limp.
Will HelloFresh feed your family were you to make it your primary food acquisition method? Yes. Does it pass the I’ve-Had-COVID-And-Now-I-Can’t-Taste-Anything test? Absolutely not.
