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: Sonam, a Senior Product Manager on the Corporate Initiative Team. Get the lowdown on her delivery highlights of the week and top ordering hacks.
Let’s meet Sonam.
Hi! I’m Sonam (pronounced like I’m so numb from the cold) and I recently joined Grubhub on the product side of things. I’m a naturalized Indian immigrant who grew up mostly on Long Island, went to school in NYC, and has been here ever since, exploring all the different cuisines this melting pot has to offer. Today, my husband Ravi and I live in Midtown West—a neighborhood with of lots of incredibly delicious, diverse and ethnic food options but also a centrally located place where Grubhub’s restaurants from both Midtown West and the Upper West Side happily deliver!
In our spare time, Ravi and I are usually found hitting up the city’s newest hotspots and cocktail bars, walking around and going to both old and new pizza joints, finding and exploring local festivals throughout the year, volunteering at America Needs You and enjoying game nights in with wine, good food, and great friends. My favorite foods and cuisines are anything spicy and vegetarian, and bonus points if it can get me to dream about eating it again!
And here are my top delivery eats from last week…
Butternut squash soup and veggies from The Little Beet
Family always has been and continues to be a big part of my life–both the family I’ve been lucky to be born into and the family that I’ve been fortunate enough to have crossed paths with. After trying to make dinner plans with my cousin Vishal, we both realized that we actually work about three blocks from each other! Not having seen him since my wedding, we decided to meet at Little Beet and catch up on our new jobs.
Little Beet is a popular restaurant for Grubhub employees and lots of professionals that work in the Bryant Park area. Rather than waste my time standing in line to order food, I wanted to save a table for us (since seating is limited), so I used Grubhub to express reorder my usual meal for pickup. I ordered their delicious butternut squash soup, charred broccoli and sweet potatoes with the chipotle aioli. I’m a sucker for hot foods, especially with the polar vortex weather that has been hitting NYC. I snagged my lunch at the scheduled pickup time, grabbed a table far away from the door and scrolled through Instagram as I waited for Vishal. Always gotta hustle in NYC, right?!
Mediterranean food from Omar’s
Working on the Product team at Grubhub means you’re testing out the experiences you are building, just to make sure nothing’s broken (wink). And if you’re ordering in food for a group of people, well you might as well order from a spot that’s got everyone’s favorite food (and would’ve been packed during lunch time)–Omar’s!
We used Grubhub’s scheduled order feature–which lets you order up to seven days in advance–on the Catering menu at Omar’s to have a beautiful spread delivered just in time for a lunch meeting. I loaded up my plate with falafel, hummus, baba ganoush, pita and tabouleh, more than once. Happiness is a full belly.
Vegetable Manchurian from Tangra
Growing up, my family and I would always celebrate birthdays and anniversaries at an Indo-Chinese restaurant called Tangra Masala in Queens. It would be a treat to have that spicy, Indian twist on Chinese food with lots of vegetarian options. When I recently walked through Murray Hill and saw Tangra Masala had opened up a sister restaurant called Tangra, I was overjoyed. When I found that it was also on Grubhub…well, my husband had to calm me down because I was screaming with excitement.
I was too tired to cook one night and I wanted my favorite dishes from Tangra, so we used Grubhub to order dinner in. We got Vegetable Manchurian (delicious little fried vegetable dumplings in a spicy sauce), garlic fried rice and Tangra Masala Noodles. The best part about ordering from here for two people is that the portions are pretty big and I was able to take the leftovers to lunch for the next day!
Cupcakes from Baked By Melissa
Grubhub has a program called Slice, where we buy food from a company on our platform and new employees get to experience the end-to-end of what it feels like to run a restaurant. From setting up the menu on Grubhub, taking in orders (from other employees) on the Grubhub for Restaurants app, prepping the food and delivering to our customers–they do it all. I had the opportunity to be the manager and do food prep for Slice this March, where we were essentially running Baked By Melissa!
I really enjoy the bite-sized cupcakes at Baked By Melissa and since I was also hosting game night, I used my remaining weekly Grubhub mealperks to order some desserts through Slice to take home. Getting to run the entire operation of a restaurant was absolutely incredible and gave me a better perspective on how we can continue improving not only our diner experience but also our restaurant experience.
Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell
I happen to absolutely love Taco Bell. We grew up eating it, especially since it was one of the fast food chains that always had a ton of vegetarian options and it was budget friendly. It has options for everyone–crunchy (and soft shell) tacos, healthy salads, hearty burritos, mild sauces for the faint hearted, hot & fire sauces for heat-seekers like me, and well, you get the point. We love it so much that we actually had it delivered to our wedding reception as late night food for our guests! The Taco Bell Cantinas that have recently been opening up in NYC draw crowds at all hours of the day. But Grubhub’s recent partnership with the chain allows me to click some buttons and get Taco Bell delivered to my apartment or be able to not wait in line and just pick it up by ordering it ahead of time. These are dreams come true. Taco Bell at my fingertips–what a time to be alive. I ordered some Doritos Locos Tacos as I left work and picked them up on my way home and treated myself to a delicious meal, loaded with hot sauce and some really good (bad) TV.
