Latest news with #Caviar
Eater
2 days ago
- Business
- Eater
Review: I Tried (and Loved) Purple Carrot's Plant-Based Meal Kits
At their best, delivery meal kits have led me to some relaxing Blue Apron-sponsored ASMR videos; at their worst, the very mention of a meal kit stirs up memories of my late great-grandmother's dreary Meals on Wheels microwaveables. Sometime in the 2010s, however, meal kit delivery subscriptions went through a renaissance in the United States, and today the several-billion-dollar industry boasts options for all kinds of diets, household sizes, and, dare I say, aesthetics (Goop lords = Sakara subscriptions ahoy). As a passionate but often exhausted home cook who loves her cruciferous-vegetable-heavy meals, that's why I wanted to give Purple Carrot's plant-based meal kit subscription a try. I signed up for about a work-week's worth of dinner kits, which, for me, meant four meals, each with one or two servings. My hopes and dreams were as follows: Please include plenty of vegetables that don't suck; please don't take more than an hour to cook; and please don't include an abundance of pre-made, sugar-filled sauces and salad dressings that Jacques Pepin would classify as dessert. The following is a breakdown of my week eating à la Purple Carrot, from the good to the confusing to the downright surprising. What is Purple Carrot? Isn't it vegan or whatever? Embarrassingly, it took me a moment to realize that Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit service. The main draw for me was simply that the platform's meals, which range from ready-to-eat microwaveables to more elaborate tofu shawarma bowl meal kits, looked tasty regardless of dietary needs. (Now, post-trial-period, I'm actually convinced that even my meat-loving family members would be satisfied with this hearty, elote-style creamed corn as a main.) Purple Carrot first popped off in 2014, which doesn't seem that long ago, but was the same year that Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence came out and Solange kicked Jay-Z in that elevator (were we ever so young?). Purple Carrot was actually the first vegan meal kit subscription service in the United States, and it has been perfecting its model for over a decade and has partnered with the likes of Mark Bittman to develop many of its (now) hundreds of recipes. As Purple Carrot explains, '[we've] expanded from being solely a meal-kit company to offering holistic plant-based grocery needs and a constantly rotating chef-crafted menu to subscribers each week.' Are the meals (actually) tasty? I selected three meal kits, the kung pao cauliflower with garlicky cucumbers, jackfruit gyros with quick pickles and tzatziki, and barbecued mushrooms with crispy potatoes and spicy Brussels sprouts, and one pre-made meal for a night that I knew I would have zero time to cook, a burrito bowl with a handful of plantains. In order to test the idiot-proof nature of these meals, I made my first dinner after coming home from spontaneous drinks with friends. I was tempted to order my dinner on Caviar, but when I glanced at the packet of DIY gyros in my fridge with its 20 minute cooking time label, I thought, I could do this. And I did, in fact, do it in under 20 minutes. Here are the gyros I chose for my first grand Purple Carrot experiment: Purple Carrot meals arrive in a cooler-packed cardboard box, with the different meals in their own individual bags (so you never get confused about what goes with what). I followed the recipe religiously, and while it was layered up with enough tomato and mint and quick pickles to feel refreshing and substantial, I started to realize the cleverness of Purple Carrot's meals as less of a one-and-done approach to meal kits and more of an accessible blueprint to developing your own takes on its recipes. Even the recipe instructions come in individual, thick-paper folders with pictures, tips, and measurements so that you can store them for future use. Next time I make jackfruit gyros, for example, I made a note on the recipe to add in a bit of smoked paprika, avocado, and feta. As you build your meal kit plan online, keep in mind that you can accommodate different dietary needs such as high-protein, low-calorie, low sodium, gluten-free, and nut-free. While I enjoyed the gyros and was impressed by how easy it was to make and customize them, the stars of the meal kit lineup were without a doubt the barbecue mushroom dish and kung pao cauliflower, both of which had sauces worth licking the bowl for, and surprised me by showing me that I can actually enjoy mushrooms, which I had previously semi-sworn off after eating far too many in my 15 years as a vegetarian. The ready-to-eat burrito bowl was a little too quinoa-forward for my taste, and gave me a jumpscare back to the kale-and-quinoa-obsessed years of health food yore, but I zhuzhed it with some avocado, lime, and cilantro. My only gripe with my meal kit plan was the portion size, which was entirely decent for me but always left my partner, a person who actually works out and needs more calories than I do, craving a little more to munch. But I guess that's also why Purple Carrot has its grocery section, which is filled with all kinds of little snacks and drinks. Still, no one likes doing a fair amount of meal prep, easy or laborious, and being hungry after your meal. How much does all of this cost? Is it cheaper than eating out? At about $11 per serving, Purple Carrot is definitely cheaper than eating out, but is probably more expensive than if I were to go out and buy my own ingredients à la carte — of course, that may vary depending on grocery prices in your region. But that isn't factoring in how much the meal kits save me time- and bandwidth-wise; the ingredients I received in my box were all fresh and unbruised, the spice mixes and oils come pre-measured, and everything can be whipped up in under an hour (and often under 30 minutes). It's easy to get excited about eating penne pesto alla trapanese after a long work day, but less easy to hype myself up to schlep to the grocery store on the subway only to return home to stand over a stove for another hour to make it. That's the bandwidth factor, and one that I don't take lightly. (It's worth noting that you can cancel your subscription at any time without penalty, as long as you do so the Tuesday before your next scheduled delivery, meaning that it's easy to accommodate dinner plans or skip a week for whatever reason.) I would also argue that Purple Carrot makes for a much more cost-effective way to dabble in different cuisines without requiring me, for example, to spend $12 on a jar of ras el hanout that I'm just not going to use very often. If anything, Purple Carrot ended up giving me several blueprints for adapting some of its signature meals in the future — but more on that in the next section. Is Purple Carrot worth it? With some caveats, Purple Carrot restored not only my faith in delivery meal kits, but reminded me of why I love plant-based eating so much. I'm not going to go on a crusade about the benefits of eating plant-based meals (plenty of studies and medical centers can do that for me) but I always cleaned the plates of my Purple Carrot dinners feeling satiated and refreshed — lighter than I feel after eating a big plate of meat, for sure (a common sentiment reported by vegetarians). As someone who recently started eating meat again, I have been sobrassada-ing too close to the sun and, admittedly, missing that feeling of feeling satisfied without feeling heavy after eating a large portion of meat As a busy and tired person, I have also hated watching my inventiveness in the kitchen take a backseat to other tasks in my life, a New York City cliché if ever there was one, although I don't yet store my shoes in my oven. Purple Carrot not only kept me fed, but genuinely interested in the flavors and spices I was about to explore. If I had the budget to spend about $100 a week on the service, I would go for it without question. As it stands, I can see myself doing the occasional splurge for a week of Purple Carrot meals during a period that I know I'll be booked and busy. I would also suggest giving a subscription to a friend or family member who just graduated, went vegetarian or vegan, or moved into their first place, because these meal kits really do moonlight as recipe cards designed for personalization. Sign up for Purple Carrot (or just browse its menu) here.
Eater
2 days ago
- Business
- Eater
I Have Found a Surprisingly Great Meal Kit Plan for a Lazy (But Discerning) Person
At their best, delivery meal kits have led me to some relaxing Blue Apron-sponsored ASMR videos; at their worst, the very mention of a meal kit stirs up memories of my late great-grandmother's dreary Meals on Wheels microwaveables. Sometime in the 2010s, however, meal kit delivery subscriptions went through a renaissance in the United States, and today the several-billion-dollar industry boasts options for all kinds of diets, household sizes, and, dare I say, aesthetics (Goop lords = Sakara subscriptions ahoy). As a passionate but often exhausted home cook who loves her cruciferous-vegetable-heavy meals, that's why I wanted to give Purple Carrot's plant-based meal kit subscription a try. I signed up for about a work-week's worth of dinner kits, which, for me, meant four meals, each with one or two servings. My hopes and dreams were as follows: Please include plenty of vegetables that don't suck; please don't take more than an hour to cook; and please don't include an abundance of pre-made, sugar-filled sauces and salad dressings that Jacques Pepin would classify as dessert. The following is a breakdown of my week eating à la Purple Carrot, from the good to the confusing to the downright surprising. What is Purple Carrot? Isn't it vegan or whatever? Embarrassingly, it took me a moment to realize that Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit service. The main draw for me was simply that the platform's meals, which range from ready-to-eat microwaveables to more elaborate tofu shawarma bowl meal kits, looked tasty regardless of dietary needs. (Now, post-trial-period, I'm actually convinced that even my meat-loving family members would be satisfied with this hearty, elote-style creamed corn as a main.) Purple Carrot first popped off in 2014, which doesn't seem that long ago, but was the same year that Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence came out and Solange kicked Jay-Z in that elevator (were we ever so young?). Purple Carrot was actually the first vegan meal kit subscription service in the United States, and it has been perfecting its model for over a decade and has partnered with the likes of Mark Bittman to develop many of its (now) hundreds of recipes. As Purple Carrot explains, '[we've] expanded from being solely a meal-kit company to offering holistic plant-based grocery needs and a constantly rotating chef-crafted menu to subscribers each week.' Are the meals (actually) tasty? I selected three meal kits, the kung pao cauliflower with garlicky cucumbers, jackfruit gyros with quick pickles and tzatziki, and barbecued mushrooms with crispy potatoes and spicy Brussels sprouts, and one pre-made meal for a night that I knew I would have zero time to cook, a burrito bowl with a handful of plantains. In order to test the idiot-proof nature of these meals, I made my first dinner after coming home from spontaneous drinks with friends. I was tempted to order my dinner on Caviar, but when I glanced at the packet of DIY gyros in my fridge with its 20 minute cooking time label, I thought, I could do this . And I did, in fact, do it in under 20 minutes. Here are the gyros I chose for my first grand Purple Carrot experiment: Purple Carrot meals arrive in a cooler-packed cardboard box, with the different meals in their own individual bags (so you never get confused about what goes with what). I followed the recipe religiously, and while it was layered up with enough tomato and mint and quick pickles to feel refreshing and substantial, I started to realize the cleverness of Purple Carrot's meals as less of a one-and-done approach to meal kits and more of an accessible blueprint to developing your own takes on its recipes. Even the recipe instructions come in individual, thick-paper folders with pictures, tips, and measurements so that you can store them for future use. Next time I make jackfruit gyros, for example, I made a note on the recipe to add in a bit of smoked paprika, avocado, and feta. As you build your meal kit plan online, keep in mind that you can accommodate different dietary needs such as high-protein, low-calorie, low sodium, gluten-free, and nut-free. While I enjoyed the gyros and was impressed by how easy it was to make and customize them, the stars of the meal kit lineup were without a doubt the barbecue mushroom dish and kung pao cauliflower, both of which had sauces worth licking the bowl for, and surprised me by showing me that I can actually enjoy mushrooms, which I had previously semi-sworn off after eating far too many in my 15 years as a vegetarian. The ready-to-eat burrito bowl was a little too quinoa-forward for my taste, and gave me a jumpscare back to the kale-and-quinoa-obsessed years of health food yore, but I zhuzhed it with some avocado, lime, and cilantro. My only gripe with my meal kit plan was the portion size, which was entirely decent for me but always left my partner, a person who actually works out and needs more calories than I do, craving a little more to munch. But I guess that's also why Purple Carrot has its grocery section, which is filled with all kinds of little snacks and drinks. Still, no one likes doing a fair amount of meal prep, easy or laborious, and being hungry after your meal. How much does all of this cost? Is it cheaper than eating out? At about $11 per serving, Purple Carrot is definitely cheaper than eating out, but is probably more expensive than if I were to go out and buy my own ingredients à la carte — of course, that may vary depending on grocery prices in your region. But that isn't factoring in how much the meal kits save me time- and bandwidth-wise; the ingredients I received in my box were all fresh and unbruised, the spice mixes and oils come pre-measured, and everything can be whipped up in under an hour (and often under 30 minutes). It's easy to get excited about eating penne pesto alla trapanese after a long work day, but less easy to hype myself up to schlep to the grocery store on the subway only to return home to stand over a stove for another hour to make it. That's the bandwidth factor, and one that I don't take lightly. (It's worth noting that you can cancel your subscription at any time without penalty, as long as you do so the Tuesday before your next scheduled delivery, meaning that it's easy to accommodate dinner plans or skip a week for whatever reason.) I would also argue that Purple Carrot makes for a much more cost-effective way to dabble in different cuisines without requiring me, for example, to spend $12 on a jar of ras el hanout that I'm just not going to use very often. If anything, Purple Carrot ended up giving me several blueprints for adapting some of its signature meals in the future — but more on that in the next section. Is Purple Carrot worth it? With some caveats, Purple Carrot restored not only my faith in delivery meal kits, but reminded me of why I love plant-based eating so much. I'm not going to go on a crusade about the benefits of eating plant-based meals (plenty of studies and medical centers can do that for me) but I always cleaned the plates of my Purple Carrot dinners feeling satiated and refreshed — lighter than I feel after eating a big plate of meat, for sure (a common sentiment reported by vegetarians). As someone who recently started eating meat again, I have been sobrassada-ing too close to the sun and, admittedly, missing that feeling of feeling satisfied without feeling heavy after eating a large portion of meat As a busy and tired person, I have also hated watching my inventiveness in the kitchen take a backseat to other tasks in my life, a New York City cliché if ever there was one, although I don't yet store my shoes in my oven. Purple Carrot not only kept me fed, but genuinely interested in the flavors and spices I was about to explore. If I had the budget to spend about $100 a week on the service, I would go for it without question. As it stands, I can see myself doing the occasional splurge for a week of Purple Carrot meals during a period that I know I'll be booked and busy. I would also suggest giving a subscription to a friend or family member who just graduated, went vegetarian or vegan, or moved into their first place, because these meal kits really do moonlight as recipe cards designed for personalization. Sign up for Purple Carrot (or just browse its menu) here . The freshest news from the food world every day
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Inside the lavish world of multi-million-dollar superyachts... and why the ultra-rich's secret island sanctuary could soon be in peril
Decked out with more marble than an Italian palace, enough staff for a CEO to call it their home office, and price tags that would make anyone who isn't a multibillionaire choke on their caviar, the superyacht lifestyle of the elite seems to be a world away. But even in the luxurious fantasy land of the ultrarich, it's not all smooth sailing.
Mint
29-04-2025
- Mint
This iPhone 16 Pro costs as much as a Tata Punch—And here's how you can get one
What if your phone was not just a phone—but a dazzling piece of luxury that turns heads like a sports car? That is exactly what Caviar, the globally renowned luxury custom brand, promises with its new line of iPhone 16 Pro models wrapped in 24-carat gold. Priced higher than many cars on Indian roads, these handcrafted devices are more than just tech—they are wearable art, designed to showcase wealth, status and spiritual elegance all in one. Yes, you read that right. Caviar's new ultra-premiumSpiritual Heritage collection offers gilded versions of the iPhone 16 Pro that start at a staggering $8,340 (approximately ₹ 7.01 lakh). If you are eyeing the most opulent 1TB iPhone 16 Pro Max "Om" edition, be prepared to shell out a jaw-dropping $10,700 (roughly ₹ 8.99 lakh). That is nearly the cost of a Maruti Suzuki Swift or a Tata Punch. Caviar is not just about excess—it is about craftsmanship and storytelling. The Spiritual Heritage collection introduces three designs—Reverence,Medina, andOm—each rooted in cultural motifs and sacred symbolism. The Om variant, in particular, stands out with a lotus-engraved silver titanium backplate, textured colours, and the iconic Om symbol, lending it a serene yet lavish aesthetic. These are not mere smartphones but status symbols. The devices are constructed using 24-carat gold, fine garnets, and other exotic materials typically reserved for high-end jewellery. Each phone is hand-crafted and produced in limited numbers, making them collector's items for the ultra-rich. For those looking to add this golden gadget to their lifestyle arsenal, the phones can be ordered directly from Caviar's official website. iPhone 16 Pro comes with a larger 6.3-inch (up from 6.1-inch) Super Retina XDR display. It also comes with latest generation Ceramic Shield and is powered by the latest A18 Pro chipset, manufactured using a 3-nanometre process. iPhone 16 Pro comes with a 6-core CPU and GPU along with a 16-core neural engine. The iPhone 16 Pro features a 48MP Fusion camera that can now record video at up to 4K 120fps in Dolby Vision. There is also a new 48MP ultra-wide-angle lens that can be used for wide-angle and even macro shots. First Published: 29 Apr 2025, 05:15 PM IST
Hindustan Times
28-04-2025
- Hindustan Times
Caviar launches Om and Medina inspired iPhone 16 Pro models made of 24-carat gold, garnets
Luxury brand Caviar has unveiled its latest collection, transforming Apple's new iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max models into limited-edition pieces of spiritual art. The Dubai-based company's Spiritual Heritage Collection features three new ultra-premium designs – Reverence, Medina, and Om – blending sacred traditions with opulent craftsmanship. Each model draws inspiration from different spiritual and cultural motifs, crafted using high-end materials such as 24-carat gold, garnets, and fine enamel. As expected from Caviar, these designs are not merely phones but luxury statements, with prices starting at $8,340. The Reverence edition presents a bold aesthetic in black and silver, featuring ornate enamel work atop a geometric titanium medallion. Echoing Islamic artistic traditions, the repeated patterns symbolise harmony and infinity, while the stark contrast between silver and matte black lends it the aura of a futuristic relic. The Medina variant honours Middle Eastern Islamic art and architecture, boasting a sculpted gold relief framed by a botanical pattern and accented with turquoise composite stone. Designed for those who value cultural symbolism and intricate craftsmanship, it offers a strong connection to spiritual and artistic heritage. Meanwhile, the Om edition draws from Buddhist and Hindu traditions, centring on themes of balance and mindfulness. It features an orange 'Om' symbol surrounded by a three-dimensional lotus design, set with 32 tiny garnets embedded into a silver titanium backplate. Inspired by meditation and inner clarity, it delivers a serene and introspective aesthetic. The Spiritual Heritage Collection forms part of Caviar's wider Credo series, which also includes luxury designs inspired by Christian and Jewish iconography, such as the St. Peter's Basilica, Mogen David, and Cathedral of Christ the Saviour editions. The new models are available now, with prices ranging from $8,340 for the Reverence edition to $9,630 for special designs such as St. Peter's Basilica. The Medina edition is priced at $8,910, while OM costs $9,200. Earlier this year, Caviar also launched a $100,000 iPhone 16 Pro Max inspired by Notre Dame Cathedral, as well as an ultra-luxury Valentine's Day collection featuring custom-designed iPhones.
