BLACK GARLIC - Demo & Review

Guys guys guys, 

Have you heard about blue apron before? I first heard it from itsjudyslife vlog. It's basically a subscription service where they will send you prepped fresh ingredients along with recipes, so all you have to do is just cook it. I really wanted to try it, but too bad such thing didn't exist in Indonesia.

Fast forward months (or is it year?) later, I randomly googled "William Wongso" -because I always get sucked into the black hole of internet, jumping from one thing and another-, and Black Garlic website was one of the first few to pop out. I think William Wongso is like the advisor or something for Black Garlic.

Black Garlic is similar to Blue Apron, except it's not a subscription service, you order it food by food.

Of course I decided to order some (I also found 100k off coupon on instagram). I was kinda giddy about it actually. So now I'm gonna review this rather unique-in-Indonesia service.

One of the nice thing about Black Garlic is that you can choose which date you want your ingredients to come, and it will come on that EXACT date. No waiting around for JNE or TIKI or whatever to get your order to you. Make sense?

Although, you do have to order 2 days prior to the date you want it to be delivered. So that kinda sucks, especially if you're as excited as I was to try them.

They come in this box with styrofoam and ice pack to keep the freshness of the ingredients.

P.s. if you keep the box until you got three of them, you can contact Black Garlic and they will come to your house to pick them up and you'll get 50000 off coupon. It's their #GOGREEN effort.

For my first order I picked up 3 menus:

• Honey Glazed Dory with Egg Salad and Sautéed Baby Buncis (4 portions)
• Beef Burger with Sweet Potato Fries and Coleslaw (2 potions - the coleslaw is only included if you order the 4 portions option)
• Rendang "William Wongso" with Ketupat and Sayur Labu (2 portions)

It cost me Rp 220,000.00 in total after the 100K coupon code. And I NEED to mention that I love the paper they print the recipe on! It's thick and doff-laminated, so if you spill something while you're using it, it won't ruin the paper.

Most of the ingredients in each menu is individually packaged like this. I usually just chuck this in the fridge without opening them up just so it's easy to take out of the fridge (as in I don't have to look through the ingredients one by one to see which one belongs to which recipe).

However, I do recommend you to take a peek inside to make sure there is no ingredient you need to put in the freezer. I made the mistake of not looking through the ingredients inside the bag, because I thought all things that's in the bag are the ones that only need to be put in the fridge, and ended up with a box of half gone-bad wontons (more on that later).

The stuffs you need to freeze if you don't wanna cook them immediately.

Alrighty, now let's get into each menu:

Honey Glazed Dory with Egg Salad and Sautéed Baby Buncis

the ingredients

All ready to be assembled

It took me 1 hour or so in total to cook this menu (I was filming the process, so it took longer than necessary), which I think is not bad for a three-dishes menu.

By the way, that's not ALL the dory they provided. I portioned it out for lunch and fry again later for dinner so that they stay crispy :) I made the baby buncis and the salad all at once tho, so what you see now is the actual portion they gave for both dishes.

The dory sauce is delicious. I like it so much that I try to recreate the sauce. The result is not exactly the same though, kinda similar, but mine lacks this "smokey" sort of flavor, which bring me to my next point:

One of the things that I don't like about Black Garlic is the fact that they don't write the recipe for the pre-packaged sauce. They only write the ingredients inside the sauce, but no measurement or how to create the sauce. This is the same with all the pre-packaged sauce and flavoring, even the prepped dishes like wontons (more on that later).

That's kinda a bummer for me as I'd very much like to recreate some of the dishes they have. I mean, it's not like they will lose business or anything if they share the recipe, given they change their menu every week anyway.

Also, for the extra dish they give you if you order 4 portions (in this case the sautéed baby buncis), they don't even write the ingredients they use inside the sauce.

Speaking of portion, their portion is GENEROUS! This three-dishes ended up being 8 portions instead of 4. I ate them with rice of course, so it helps in stretching the portions, BUT! each of those 8 portions was still generous, I didn't skimp on it or try to really force it into 8 portions. 

So if you really want to make it a bit budget, I recommend you to choose the "family-style" menu where you portion the dishes yourself (as opposed to, for example, burger, where it's already portioned out for you. Make sense?). Other tip is, try to order the "4 portions" option instead of "2 portions", because most of the menus are cheaper if you buy "4 portions" and you may also get "bonus dish" on some menu ;)

Oh, The egg salad and sauteed baby buncis are tasty as well :)

This is the demo for this dish on my vlog:

Up next:

Beef Burger with Sweet Potato Fries and Coleslaw

the ingredients

bun, bun, bun

The burger bun is from Vineth, which I believe is a bakery by William Wongso.

tomatoes

the lettuce, which look sad

For a company that pride themselves in fresh ingredient, this lettuce doesn't look good. Note that I made this dish 2 days after it arrived (they say their ingredients can last up to 5 days) and when they arrived I immediately stored them in my fridge. But all in all, I'm not prissy enough to not eat the lettuce, it's just a bit of bruising anyway.

all prepped and ready to be assembled

This burger was only ok for me, like they're pretty good, but not amazing.

The highlight of this burger for me is actually the bun. Yup, the bun. The bun is sooo sooo good. It has this buttery taste to it, and combined with the crispy top and edges, it is amazing. The burger sauce is something worth mentioning as well. They're what make this burger decent.

As for the meat, they're not as big as I want it to be. I know, I know, it contradicts my previous statement about the generous portion, but for this burger, I can stand a bit more meat. You can see in this picture that the meat patty only cover half of the bun.

I suppose you can make the patty flatter for it to cover the whole bun, but I like my meat thick and juicy. that's what she said.

As for the sweet potato fries, they're okay, I don't really like the "floury" coating.

Next:

Rendang "William Wongso" with Ketupat and Sayur Labu

the ingredients

I made this one on Eid-Mubarak because, you know, it makes sense.

I don't have much to say about it other than that it's completely satisfactory.

Ketupat, good. Rendang, good. Sayur labu, good. All around a great lunch :)

Though I must say that the highlight is the Sayur Labu. It's so so yummy (how can it not with the exorbitant amount of coconut milk, right? Coconut milk has always been my favorite), I literally gulped every last drop of it, drank it all.

However, just like the others, unfortunately they don't give you the recipe for the "bumbu" (flavoring) of this awesome sayur labu either, which is such a shame because I so would make this again. and again. and again.

NEXT!

Sesame Chicken with Potato Wedges and Shrimp Wonton Soup

the ingredients

This one is my second order. I ordered two menus this time, but the other one I didn't take photo of, so this is the last one on this review. FINALLY, right? Sorry for the long post.

First I'd like to mention the potatoes. They're browning :(

I mean, obviosly they'll be brown after they are cut up 'cause they oxidize, so I think it's better if they give the potato unsliced, just washed. While it means more prep for us, it also means fresher potato. Plus the brown water residue kinda irked me.

Just random photo of the broth gel.

I was just amused, so I took more photo of it. I've never seen broth (or is it consommé?) in a gel form.

This is the wonton I've been talking about. I didn't realize that there was this box of wontons that you need to store in the freezer, so half of mine had gone bad. The ones that hadn't were good though. How do I know which one was good and which one was bad you ask? I bit into each one of them after putting them in the soup lol.

Bottomline, please make sure you check inside the bag to see if there's any ingredients you need to store in the fridge! Don't be a dodo like me.

Oh, and this wonton soup definitely need some extra salt.

From all the five menu I've tried so far, this is definitely my least favorite. 

The sesame sauce was bland. like really bland. The marinate for the chicken didn't add much flavor either, so I ended up eating them with chili sauce to get some flavor. The potato wedges were meh as well.

The saving grace for this dish is definitely the wonton soup, which I really like, but unfortunately I had to dump half of mine away because of my stupidity -___-"

Alright, now I'm done with all the dishes!!

Here's a bit of summary:

Pros:

• Reasonable price
• New menu selection every week
• Most of the menus that I've tried are good
• They have #GREENBOX program
• No preservative
• No MSG
• Safe packaging
• You can choose on what date you want your food to be delivered
• Generous portions

Cons:

• No written recipe for the pre-packaged sauces and prepped dishes
• I've gotten a couple ingredients (potatoes and lettuce) that weren't as, I don't know how to put it, maybe not in a condition that I want them to be.

Overall, I do like Black Garlic. I think they're an awesome service. It's definitely cheaper than getting take out/eating out. Of course, it's cheaper if you just go out and buy the ingredients yourself, but this is a great alternative if you don't have time to do your grocery or if you don't like to do too much prep. As for me, I like it because I get to try to cook all these different food I've never cooked before, kinda like food inspiration. foodpiration. It's great for when I don't know what I want to cook. If only they put the recipe for the sauce and the prepped dishes (like recipes for the wonton and ayam kuning), then they would be perfect for me. Will I order again from them? Definitely.

If you're interested in trying Black Garlic too, you can use the coupon code "PRISCILLA10380" to get 1 FREE menu ;)


FTC Disclaimer: Not a sponsored post. Paid everything myself. The coupon code is a referral code that ALL the people who have purchased from them have. All opinion are honest as always.

P.s. sorry for the catastrophe that is my grammar in this post.