Special treat for new mums and dads
(28/10/2008)

The Kitchen New Arrival package has been created as a special treat for new mums and dads. Costing £150 (+ delivery if outside central London) it includes a week’s worth of meals (14 adult servings) and a bottle of champagne, and will be delivered to your door all packaged in eco-friendly materials.

This new food concept is coming to the rescue of time-stretched and sleep-starved new parents desperate for a decent home-cooked meal, and friends and family wanting to give a useful gift. The Kitchen enables you to create a week’s worth of delicious and nutritious Michelin-quality meals to give to new mums and dads. If you can’t get to the store, you can order a week’s worth of meals online and pick up instead, or give a gift voucher for them to spend on their own choice of dishes.

The Kitchen is the novel new food concept from Michelin-star chef, Thierry Laborde, and food entrepreneur, Natalie Richmond. A cross between a cookery school, high-end takeaway, bakery and wine shop, it is a place that makes preparing home-cooked meals easy and fun, where you can socialise and have a glass of wine, whilst doing something wholly practical too.

By borrowing someone else’s kitchen it takes the mess and stress out of preparing meals in your own. In little over an hour, up to a week’s worth restaurant-quality meals are possible, with no food waste because just the right amount of ingredients are used.

The concept works by simply going online, ordering meals from the seasonal menu created by Thierry. You then book a session and come into the store to prepare your meals, with direct access to fully trained chefs to help if you need it. All of the shopping, chopping and pot washing is done for you, so you can relax and enjoy the experience. Everything can then be taken home in eco-friendly containers to flash cook in your own kitchen, chill or freeze for later.

The principally free-range and organic sourcing policy means you get access to top quality ingredients from Thierry's network of restaurant suppliers that you won't find in the supermarket, yet prices start at a modest £5 per portion where the nearest restaurant equivalent would come closer to £15.

With an ethically-minded sourcing policy, Thierry and Natalie are also hoping to make people think about the environment as well as the food on their plates:

Hand-picked and locally-sourced suppliers
* Free-range and organic options
* In-season menu
* Eco-friendly cartons
* Carry-home bags that double as aprons
* Grow-your-own seed scheme

With time and budget pressures, the need to watch diet and the fact that people would prefer not to eat ready meals, they just don’t always have the time or confidence to cook from scratch, The Kitchen answers a huge need in many people’s lives.