Editor’s note: We tested CookUnity ourselves and partnered with the brand to give The Chalkboard Mag readers 50% off their first week with code CHALK50. Click Here to get offer. 

I am someone who could very realistically earn a spot on Worst Cooks in America. I have tried cooking, followed recipes, and purchased ingredients with the sincere belief that I was about to become someone who casually makes dinner at home. But between my work schedule, constant travel, and the deeply offensive pile of dishes afterward, cooking has never been something I enjoy or realistically have time for.

I also tried meal prepping because everyone says it is the responsible, cost effective thing to do. That ended quickly when I realized I do not want to eat the same dish more than twice, and leftovers do not always agree with my stomach.

As a single person, I also do not keep a perfectly stocked refrigerator. Making one interesting recipe usually meant buying ten ingredients, using a tiny amount of each, and watching the rest slowly expire. By the time I added everything up, it often cost more than simply ordering from a restaurant.

So, for a very long time, I relied on DoorDash and Uber Eats nearly every day. Eventually I looked at how much I was spending on delivery fees, service charges, tips, and meals every week. That was when I realized something needed to change, and it led me to CookUnity, the first prepared meal service that genuinely feels like an alternative to ordering from a restaurant.

My Long Search for a Meal Delivery Service I Actually Liked

Living in Los Angeles, I am lucky to have no shortage of prepared meal delivery services. There are healthy services, organic services, local services, and services that can accommodate different dietary preferences and food restrictions. I tested more of them than I can remember, genuinely hoping to find something that would make my life easier.

Time and time again, I was disappointed.

I consider myself a pretty serious food person. I love restaurants, I travel partly to eat, and I get excited about discovering chefs and cuisines. Unfortunately, many prepared meal services taste exactly like what they are: packaged meals.

The food might technically check all the right nutritional boxes, but it often lacks seasoning, texture, and any real personality. Even the more elevated wellness services, which looked beautiful and used impressive ingredients, tended to come in portions that simply were not enough. I did not want another carefully arranged bowl that tasted fine but left me hungry an hour later.

I needed real food. I wanted meals that tasted like something I would actually choose from a restaurant menu, not something I was reluctantly eating because it was convenient.

That is what made CookUnity feel different almost immediately.

What Makes CookUnity Different

CookUnity is not a traditional meal kit. There are no raw ingredients, tiny sauce containers, or “20 minute” recipes that somehow take your entire evening. The meals arrive fully prepared and fresh, so all you have to do is heat and eat.

What really sets CookUnity apart is its chef driven model. You are choosing dishes from acclaimed restaurateurs, television chefs, James Beard Award winners, and chefs connected to Michelin starred restaurants, including Marcus Samuelsson, Michelle Bernstein, and Ludo Lefebvre.

The selection is also hard to beat: 400 meals nationwide from more than 130 chefs, spanning over 45 diets and cuisines. It feels less like subscribing to one meal service and more like having a collection of restaurants in your refrigerator. You can choose how many meals you want each week, then skip or pause deliveries whenever your schedule changes.

The Filters Make It Much Easier to Find Food You Actually Want

One of the most important parts of CookUnity for me was being able to narrow down the menu without accidentally eliminating everything worth eating.

You can browse by chef, cuisine, protein, diet, and lifestyle, with options for vegan, pescatarian, Mediterranean, keto, low calorie, high protein, and GLP 1 focused meals. You can also filter out ingredients and categories you want to avoid, including gluten, dairy, soy, nuts, added sugar, pork, and spicy foods.

This may not sound particularly exciting until you have food restrictions and have tried using another meal delivery service. With many companies, I would enter my allergies and dietary needs only to discover that my exciting weekly menu had suddenly become two plain chicken dishes and one deeply uninspiring vegetable bowl. It felt less like customizing my meals and more like being punished for having dietary restrictions.

With CookUnity, I still had plenty of interesting options after applying my filters. I could save my preferred cuisines, proteins, nutritional goals, and ingredients I wanted to avoid, which made it much easier to get to the meals that actually worked for me without conducting a full ingredient investigation every week.

The Real Test: How Does the Food Actually Taste?

Everything can look impressive on a website, but none of it matters if the food tastes like it came from the back of an airport lounge refrigerator.

This is where CookUnity won me over. The meals arrive fresh rather than frozen, individually sealed, clearly labeled, and ready to heat. More importantly, they taste much closer to something I would order from a restaurant on Uber Eats or DoorDash than a typical prepared meal.

When I want something filling and comforting, my go-to is the Pink Sauce Rigatoni with Chicken from Cat Cora, the first female Iron Chef and the first woman inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame. For a lighter lunch, I love the Classic Salad Niçoise with Albacore Tuna from Ludo Lefebvre, whose acclaimed Los Angeles restaurant Trois Mec earned a Michelin star.

The portions are also noticeably more satisfying than what I have experienced with other services. CookUnity leaves me full without sending me back to the refrigerator an hour later.

I Started Choosing Meals by Chef

Once I found a few chefs whose food matched the way I like to eat, I started checking their dishes first every week. It is similar to finding a restaurant you love and wanting to work your way through the menu.

That is one of the more enjoyable parts of CookUnity. You begin to learn which chefs consistently make the kinds of dishes you like, which cuisines you gravitate toward, and whose meals you can order with confidence.

The customer ratings also make it easier to decide. When I am stuck between two meals, I usually look at which one other subscribers rated more highly. With so many options each week, those ratings help prevent me from spending an unreasonable amount of time debating two different chicken dishes.

Between the rotating menu, new dishes, and a few chefs I now reliably order from, selecting my meals has become something I actually look forward to each week. CHECK OUT THE LIST OF CHEFS HERE.

It Made Eating at Home Much Easier

The obvious benefit is that I no longer have to cook, shop for one specific recipe, or order restaurant delivery every day. I know there is something in my refrigerator that I am actually excited to eat, whether it is for lunch or dinner, so I do not have to wait until I am starving, scroll through delivery apps for 45 minutes, and somehow spend $50 on an ordinary meal.

I am also wasting fewer groceries and throwing away fewer ingredients that I optimistically purchased but never found time to use. CookUnity gives me the convenience of takeout without all the extra fees and last minute decision making.

I can also see how useful it would be for families, especially during the back to school rush when everyone is on a different schedule and no one has time to cook every meal from scratch. Since each person can choose something different, parents are not forced to find one dish that somehow satisfies every child’s preferences, dietary needs, and current list of foods they have suddenly decided they no longer eat.

It is not going to be cheaper than cooking in bulk every Sunday. But that was never the realistic comparison for me. My real alternative was ordering delivery almost every day, and compared with that habit, CookUnity makes considerably more sense.

Is CookUnity Worth It?

CookUnity makes the most sense for people who love good food but do not have the time or interest to cook every day. It is especially useful for busy professionals, frequent travelers, single person households, and families where everyone wants something different.

For me, the value is simple. The meals are convenient, satisfying, easy to customize, and good enough that I do not feel like I settled for meal delivery. I started using CookUnity to spend less on restaurant delivery, but I stayed because it gives me the same sense of choice and enjoyment without opening DoorDash every day.

And as someone who remains fully qualified for Worst Cooks in America, that may be the closest I am ever going to get to having award winning chefs cook for me every week.

We do not give up valuable refrigerator space lightly, but after testing CookUnity ourselves, we feel pretty confident you will love it as much as we did. We partnered with CookUnity to give our readers 50% off their first week with code CHALK50. Consider it your sign to let someone else handle the cooking for once.

All material on The Chalkboard Mag is provided for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider for any questions you have regarding a medical condition, and before undertaking any diet, exercise, or other health related programs. This story is brought to you in partnership with CookUnity.