Here at Grubhub, our employees are pretty obsessed with food. Every day, we’re making sure
delicious food finds its way to your door….and to ours. Say what? Correct, we too order from Grubhub (so meta).
With our “What I Ate in a Week” series, you’ll get a sneak peek into the lives of actual — never not hungry — Grubhub team members. A nice benefit that happens to come with our jobs is what we call “mealperks” — our weekly Grubhub stipend. Clearly, we’re using this to get the best bites in town each and every week.
On deck, we have: Jes, a Copywriter on our Creative Team. Get the lowdown on her delivery highlights of the week and top ordering hacks.
Let’s meet Jes
Full disclaimer: I am THAT person. The one on a diet at the beginning of the year. I know, it’s terrible, and honestly just unwise because my job revolves around food that I mostly cannot eat. But, I made this commitment, and now this is life.
If you’re reading this while in the same boat as me (hi, nice to meet you, I think this is hard, too), I’ve scoured menus and worked my magic on special instructions to make my takeout compliant—a task thought impossible to many.
And here are my top delivery eats from last week…
Custom Salad at Just Salad
Rule one of getting takeout while dieting: Find places with “salad” in the name. Just Salad has been a go-to of mine for years, but like most places, their menu can be hard to navigate if you’re avoiding a lot of ingredients. To get around this, I swapped my previous go-to order with something I can build myself.
This salad is a mix of spinach and supergreens, tandoori spiced chicken, hard boiled egg, sliced tomato, broccoli, cucumber and carrots, topped off with a little balsamic and olive oil for dressing. Pro tip: If you’re like me and avoiding most salad dressings, see if the restaurant will add salt and pepper or a squeeze of lemon or lime to give that lettuce some kick. Also, Just Salad has an awesome loyalty program, where if you spend $99 you get $9 free.
Custom Salad from Sweetgreen
No surprise here–more salad. But, even if a sandwich on a fluffy, crunchy sourdough baguette was an option (someone remind me why I’m doing this again), I’d still be down for Sweetgreen. This is a salad place that transforms salad deniers. Their ingredients are fresh, constantly changing and unbelievably delicious. If nutrition is important to you, their website has the most comprehensive nutrition list I’ve ever seen. Building a salad that was compliant was a total breeze. This one is a spinach salad with roasted chicken, caramelized onion, spicy broccoli, cucumber and hard boiled egg with their homemade hot sauce and spicy cashew dressing. I miss spicy food, can you tell?
Salmon and Shrimp Bowl from Aloha Poke
Poke is a good option if you’re trying to eat healthy. (You’ll just have to keep an eye on certain sauces and marinades—which can be filled with extra sugar.) You can make it work though, and places like Aloha Poke have just the customization options you need to do it. I got a mixed greens bowl with “naked” salmon and shrimp, cucumbers, pineapple, maui onions and tobiko. That by itself is a little light for a lunch, so I also got a side of sesame oil as a less fun but more compliant dressing. (Oh, and full disclosure, I forgot to take a picture of this one. But this picture from the restaurant is a pretty close re-enactment.)
Grilled Salmon from Sopraffina Marketcaffe
Sopraffina Marketcaffe is an unexpected spot to get good, healthy food on the cheap. While some of their menu items are out of my lunch budget, they also offer á la carte options for a fraction of the price of a full meal. Today I had some extra veggies from home, so I picked up this grilled salmon for just seven bucks.
If you’re also living on a budget (go you, save that money)–opting for pick up and looking for restaurants with rewards programs (like Just Salad) on Grubhub are all great ways to save cash on takeout.
