Verdict: Maple is Good. Do it Up.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the concept of Maple is pretty awesome. They put different kitchens all around the city so your food never has to travel far to get to you. It comes well put together and still warm, their delivery staff is friendly, the menus are varied and healthy, and lunch and dinner are $12 and $15 respectively, with all tax and gratuity included. Pretty awesome. Add to it that every meal comes with a Christina Tosi cookie, and the fact that the service is backed by David Chang? We’re sold.

But what’s a great concept without great execution? The first few times we had Maple, though, we were pretty disappointed with the food. It’s not that it was terrible, but it was just really average and blah.

Maybe they’ve worked out kinks, or maybe I’ve been ordering better, but I’ve found myself really enjoying Maple. Part of it is probably the awesome menu takeovers. Recently, David Chang created a menu for the company and this week Dan Kluger designed dishes for them. Kluger’s menu is great- we had the Brussels Sprout and Shrimp salad today.

MaplexDanKluger_BrusselsSalad

 

It was delicious and filling, it came to the office quickly, and it didn’t look like someone had chewed it up and spit it back out into the container.

But it’s not just the celebrity chefs who are getting on board. We’ve ordered other items from Maple this week and there’s an improvement across the board, particularly in taste. Delivery fish is always suspect, but we’ve ordered shrimp from Maple twice this week and it’s hit the mark both times.

We’ll just chalk it up to issues at the beginning of any company’s opening. Maple has totally hit its stride.

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