As mentioned in the Holbox topic. Other LA participants include:
- Alimento
- Gwen
- The Joint
- Little Fatty
- Pasjoli
- Saison (Angler?)
I can’t find a customer-oriented site. I guess each restaurant does its own?
Nowadays because we are cooking so much more at home, we rarely go to the same restaurant once a year let alone once a month. So as I got heavy promotion for Table22… I kinda ignored it. Then, Standings Butcher Shop announced their partnership (I had previously asked them to join locale). I signed up instantly!
I love Standings, we get all our holiday meats from them, we try to go once a month, but sometimes that turns into two and as of late… four! We don’t eat that much meat, we have a great live kill chicken place we can walk to and since Locale added Electric City Butchers we’ve gotten a lot from them, so as I said… it had been a while…
So the deal is similar to the other Table22 deals. You get options of a $85 sub or a $155. The difference being more serving size. The idea is that you get at least four meals out of what you get from the box, which to me, sounded like a STEAL. You also get some other ‘perks’ and you have the option to add on pantry items for $25 more. My pantry is pretty well stocked at the moment, so I passed… but their pantry items are Rancho Gordo, produce from Weiser Farm… I’m sure it’d be a great add on eventually.
Well yesterday was the first box pick up day! I got the $85 dollar box Two weeks before pick up, they ask if you want the add on. A week before pick up day, you select your pick up slot you want to go pick up. I loved how organized it is which in my crazy life was ample enough time to get my $#!+ in order.
And if you are still reading… here’s what I got!!
WAY MORE than I expected!!!
– 1lb Ground Beef $12.99 – We live on Ground Meats. Usually for us it’s Chicken or Berkshire Pork we get from Tokyo Central! Looking forward to using this to make Hamburg Steaks!
– 0.8lb Boneless Pork Chops $15.38 – Looking forward to grilling these and serving it with some Banza Mac n Cheese I want to try.
– 1.96lbs Rib Eye $66.62 – I was floored when I saw this in the as part of the box. I was expecting some cut of something nice… but not nearly 2lbs!!! They also included a really nicely written recipe for reverse searing these bad boys
– 1lb of house rendered Lard $7 – I just happened to be out of lard so I was thrilled to get this. Will be making Cobbler!
– Escali Pocket Meat Thermometer $17 – We are a Thermapen household, but we have lost two to travel (Including one we think was pilfered by the TSA) so we will be traveling with this now for sure as it seems super fast and accurate even in the ambient environment,
– Portion of Flakey Sea Salt. ? Love that they added this instead of a whole container. It’s just enough for the items on the box.
– Lemon Merguez Sausage $8 – This was the item I honestly was most looking forward to! I love Standings sausage and I hope they continue to send them. Because Merguez tend to be a thinner smaller sausage, they included 4!
You could just see how wonderfully spiced and fatty these little sausages here! They held up great on the grill and we made them into Sandwiches using Surfas Parbaked Baguettes, whipped up some Harrisa mayo, grilled up some asparagus and whipped up a package of Trader Joes Slaw (So glad it’s back! The dressing is awesome and has actual celery seeds in it!)
Total value of the box not factoring in the portion of salt or bag… $127! Well worth the price paid! Looking forward to next months!
–Dommy!
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Just a follow up with Month 2 of the Standings Box! Not surprisingly, this wasn’t as impressive as the first box. However, the value was still over the $85 purchase price and the items included were highly useable and seemingly delicious!
– 0.6lb Marrow Burgers $19.99 – We have been on a bit of a burger kick (I got a crazy deal on 4lbs of Organic Beef from Grocery Outlet about a month ago) and looking forward to trying these. Not sure we can do them smashburger style what with the marrow… So we’ll treat them like Kobe Burgers.
– 2.1lb Pork Spare Ribs $31.03 – I LOVE ribs. Glad we got a portion for the two of us. The recipe card this month included a recipe on how to do them… It appears to be very close to Alton’s recipe, which is what we typically use and then finish on the grill.
– 3.4lb Spatchcocked Whole Chicken $26.27 We do chicken every week to have during the week. We use it in salads and dishes. Who doesn’t like a nice wing to snack on, Usually we buy Trader Joes Organic, Heritage if they have it. But this chicken was super nice. Plumpy and they did an EXCELLENT job taking out the back. P. said…it would have been nice if they gave us the back to use for stock (That is what we do), but we know they also probably use it for their own house stock.
1 Standings Spice Rubs, Chicken and Pork. Guestimate $18 based on other similar spice blends being sold by other shops. The ingredients in these rubs are impressive. Way beyond your typical spice mix with ingredients like grains of paradise and lime peel. They are also in a large bottle. We already used the chicken one (Look down!!), will probably give the Pork one away (We make our own BBQ Blends), which something I like about these type of sub boxes… it gives me a stash of stuff I can easily give away as gifts.
So total, $95.79
The first item we went for was the Spatchcock Chicken. Like I said, lovely cut on the back.
We added the Chicken Spice liberally all over the chicken.
We put in the fridge uncovered overnight and then grilled it…
Turned out great!! Chicken was tender and juicy. We also loved the spice. So many poultry spices are sage heavy. The lime peel in this just popped.
So all in all, still pretty happy with the sub. Looking forward to next month and getting these when it gets chillier and it’s braising season!
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It’s crazy that they don’t provide a full list of partners. Would’ve never known about Mini Kabob joining if it weren’t for FTC.
Even googling “los angeles site:table22.com” doesn’t catch it. But it does pull up:
Pizzana, Genever, Pikuniko, Mayday, Eat Your Drink, Kensho, Kippered, Taco Vega, Slab, Ospi.
(Some of these pages look incomplete, and Holbox’s page is no longer valid)
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For Mini Kabob, they literally just added today. The same with Highly Likely (theirs is a BioDynamic Wines box). But yeah, I can’t make heads nor tails about how they sort of chose to display their partner restaurants on their website.
They seem to be large scale (lots of markets) with low staffing. There was a date snafu with the recent standings box and their scheduling system. It wasn’t a big deal and they handled it well, but it did seem to be like ONE person who is also working on weekends (which urked me tremendously)
That is why before signing up for Mini Kabob, I had to see how easy it was to unsub. Some subs make it HARD and I had a feeling if I had to call someone, no one would pick up the phone.
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Unsubing was pretty pain free when I’ve done it in the past. I do appreciate that they have a delivery option now. My guess is they are a pretty lightweight operation, more like a templated storefront for these restaurants and part of what keeps their fee low is not really doing any marketing of listing for the restaurants. Restaurants basically have to push their offerings themselves. I’d bet if you ask most of them, they would tell you their volume through table 22 is very low, but it’s also not a big deal to fulfill them so why not have the extra money?
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FYI Holy Basil also has a Table22 subscription. Agreed that the inability to search is an impediment to discoverability- I found out through Holy Basi’s IG/emails.
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Are all these subscriptions from different restaurants for prepare-at-home/with-instructions dishes or all for fully cooked dishes you pick up/deliver hot at the day they are cooked - it’s really not clear from many descriptions. And is there really no way to search by city ?
Table 22’s customers are restaurants. They’re not trying to be an ordering hub.
But restaurants will only continue to be customers for Table22 if they see a benefit - and the key for restaurants to have a benefit out of this can only happen if restaurant customer actually find any restaurants.
The restaurants themselves promote it.
My guess is Table22 only gets paid when people buy subscription so there’s no/low ongoing cost to restaurants to participate.
A big part of the idea is that it’s a way to promote to and reward regulars. Also, Table22 does sometime announce new partners via email. Which is how I found out about Mini Kabob.
I still don’t understand the business model of T22 as they most likely will earn more money with more subscriptions sold which would most likely happen if their webpage had some absolute basic search functions.
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This is 100% true, but not uncommon with these types of ventures. Right now I imagine they are focused on getting restaurants on board than their UI. In fact, kinda ‘hiding’ the competition may play into their favor. We’ll see how it all plays out as the restaurants at least know it’s a given order every month, it’s up to them to figure out of it’s worth it if subs drop or if they aren’t making as much as the effort.
Locale works on a similar model where you order upfront and then the restaurant treats it like a large catering/wholesale order (That is where Locale makes it’s money, by charging us full freight).
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Well I was good while it lasted (3 months), Standings just sent a note about them cancelling their subs to focus on their “On premise” operations. I really enjoyed all three boxes, it got me to visit them more often than I ordinarily would and I always supplemented when I went to pick up (The Frito Pie sausage I got last month was INSANE) Still, you never know the type of demands these things can put on a small business so I respect their decision.
–Dommy!
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that sounds great— all of the sausages I’ve tried from them have been really interesting and tasty. I almost got some instead of the double cheeseburger when I was there last, but the woman working the counter thought missing the burger was a mistake… so…sausages next time
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Little Fatty also is taking a break from Table 22.
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What I found interesting is I turned my Little Fatty subscription off at the beginning of summer and not once did they make an effort to get me to turn it back on. I guess this just isn’t a priority. Now I guess my plan to turn it on again at a later date is moot.
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