A new meal subscription service is delivering dishes from Toronto’s top chefs (and one Michelin-starred restaurant)

Food prep is time-consuming, prepared-meal delivery services can be meh and searching through the myriad offerings on Uber Eats often feels like doomscrolling. (Why does Walmart show up first on the list when I’m looking for lunch?) These aren’t big problems compared to what else we’re up against nowadays, but at least they have a solution. It was announced this morning that New York–based CookUnity—a weekly subscription service for meals created by top chefs—will shake up the food delivery scene in Ontario starting June 1. Instead of the usual burgers and fries, boring grain bowls, or overcooked salmon, foodies unable or unwilling to cook can now simply heat and eat single servings of grilled chicken with pine nut–chili salsa created by Patrick Kriss (Alo), smoky butter chicken with basmati rice by Hemant Bhagwani (Bar Goa) and Jamaican pepper shrimp by Dadrian Coke (Chubby’s Jamaican). It’s like Covid-times takeout, minus the pandemic!

The starting lineup—which lists more than 100 dishes—also includes made-to-order meals from the minds of acclaimed international chefs like Chopped champion Einat Admony (cod in a spicy Moroccan tomato sauce) and James Beard Award winner Jose Garces (Mission-style carnitas).

Related: Inside the mind-bending business of keeping a restaurant alive during a pandemic

But it’s not just celebrity chefs in the CookUnity kitchen, a 25,000-square-foot commissary in North York: some of the city’s emerging culinary talent is helping to build the weekly rotating roster of recipes. “Our approach gives chefs the freedom to concentrate on what they do best, creating flavour-forward meals, without having to worry about expenses like commercial rent or the complexities of sourcing ingredients and managing logistics,” said CookUnity Canada co-founder Michael Baruch in a press release.

If the pandemic gave us anything (besides an overwhelming sense of dread), it was a taste for high-quality takeout and the need for better work-from-home meals—because nothing is sadder than a sad desk lunch when that desk is actually your dining room table.