ipsa provisions
8 months ago
When I initially wrote an excoriating review of an Ipsa dinner, I said I would I will be happy to come back and upgrade my review if the next dinners I taste actually live up to the description and if I got a reasonable answer from ipsa, which at the time had not happened. My first Ipsa dish was the Autumn Mac + Greens, which was accompanied by a photo showing an appetizing pasta with identifiable pieces of Swiss chard, caramelized onion, and cubes of organic local squash in what looked like and was described as a cheesy sauce. I got a disappointing container of overcooked pasta with miniscule flecks of green (like from frozen chopped spinach) and maybe six 3/4-inch cubes of squash. no discernible caramelized onions and no discernible cheese taste. I ate about half of it (unhappily) and then for the second half, roasted some butternut squash, picked some chard from my garden, and added cheddar, parmesan and cream cheese--and it was really quite good--the idea for the dish was great and it should have been delicious. I wrote them and got a response: "I'm very sorry to hear you didn't enjoy the Autumn Mac + Greens. I've gone ahead and passed your feedback along to our culinary team. Looking forward to hearing what you think of the rest of your order!" Which was not satisfactory to me. At that point, I found the name of the founder and wrote him on LinkedIn. Today I got a lovely and apologetic email from him, enough to encourage me to keep trying ipsa. By then I'd tried the chicken pot pie, which had great flavor and lent some credibility to the good reviews I'd read about ipsa in the New York Times and New York Magazine. I realize I'd written on a holiday week and so I'm going to give them some slack for that. So that's it so far (this is more namby-pamby than my first post, which I'm now editing.) At that point I was hoping that Ipsa stands by its reputation and that as the founder of the comp any promised, they improve their quality control so that the dishes sent out have all the ingredients) but also that the rest of the food stands up better to my expectations. The first half of the chicken pot pie did show off their potential though it was runny.. Reheated, it was great. Third try was pasta Bolognese, which was sufficiently good (the other diner really liked it, but I like my own more). I wouldn't mark them down for the the Bolognese, but I wouldn't order it again. Am now down to the final of my four, farrow mushroom soup, then we'll see. I did try it, and to my surprise it had all the greens that the Autumn Mac + Greens lacked. It also had other vegetables (carrots, maybe onions) and a lot of different grains. What it didn't have--at least not noticeably -- was mushrooms or mushroom flavor. And the farro was hard to spot amid the other grains. I am a big fan of mushrooms and farro, and was looking forward to a soup with that wonderful mushroom umami flavor mixed with the nuttiness of farro but instead got a kind of winter stew. Bottom line: I won't reorder, because I can cook most of their items better than they can, and I know where to get a really good chicken pot pie, that lives up to the flavors they promised in their description.