Caviar Delivery - Olives
Warm olives from Be'Wiched Deli.
True confession: I would love to be the kind of person who has spontaneous dinner parties. I see those people on the other side of social media doing that and they look so happy, with their sushi-rolling/Mediterranean-platter-assembling/laughing-in-joyous-company selves.
But the true and dismal fact is that I seem to have turned into the kind of person who at all times has either a clean house or a full refrigerator, and never both at the same time. Or, you know how it is, I have friends around, and even cheese, but only gluten-filled crackers and my friends eat gluten-free, or I have chips and salsa, but it’s only have salsa that my friends’ children regard as chili pepper laced poison. That elusive spontaneous dinner party thing — how can I do it?
Well guess what. There’s a new-ish delivery service in town called Caviar, which has joined DoorDash and BiteSquad, and it has all of these last-minute catering options, and they’re pretty fabulous. They deliver Quang Deli, the iconic south Minneapolis Vietnamese spot, and you can get a bowl of pho—but you can also get trays of 20 or 40 spring rolls, or pad Thai for 8 or 16. You can deal with everyone’s highly specific food needs with paleo, vegan, grain-free etc., meals from Agra Culture. (They’ll even bring juice-pouches if you’re one of those double-income, no-kid couples with a white couch and toddlers drop by.) If a pack of teens assemble in your rec room, you can get 10 burritos from the very authentic and delightful Taqueria Los Ocampo brought to your house so they don’t empty your cupboards. If they’re more trend-forward teens, Caviar even has those very on-trend sushi burritos from SotaRol. But that’s not all. Caviar has Be’Wiched Deli, the chef-driven, totally fantabulous deli. I had friends over (and wine), and had them deliver a totally elite Red Table meat platter, a quart of warm olives, and I should have gotten the smoked spiced cashews. I got a few other things, the legendary small-Thanksgiving-turkey sized pastrami sandwich (wonderful, as always) and their version of a Greek salad, which I had never had before and can report is spectacular—and enormous. It would easily feed two, or even four as a first-course appetizer salad.
Be'Wiched Deli Caesar Salad
Caesar Salad from Be'Wiched Deli.
I’ve been something of a skeptic on this whole restaurant delivery revolution we are living through. Yes, like any sentient being, I love getting delivery from top restaurants. But frankly, once you throw in the service fees, delivery charges, and the tip, you can be literally doubling the cost of the food, and by then I typically think: Let’s just go out. Spontaneous catering though, that’s a dream I didn’t even know I had. And it looks like someone has finally cracked the code of how a busy modern person who has friends with highly specific food needs can have spontaneous dinner parties. Bring on the drop in guests!
