by “The Food Guy” – Food Blogger / Restaurant Critic for Vero Vine
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Ever have one of those days, where dad is running late from work, the kids are screaming that they are hungry, and mom is too tired to cook something for dinner? Grabbing fast food or going out to a nice sit-down dinner seems like your only option, but you always have a problem choosing where to go to make everyone happy? These are common problems we all face from time to time. Heck, even “The Food Guy” and his wife don’t always want to go out and struggle with the decision on where to go most of the time. Let me introduce you to a brand new service that hopes to help you solve these problems. Chow Cab is a restaurant delivery service that takes your order and delivers food to your door within about 60 minutes. Sounds too good to be true, right? Let’s jump in and see what this service has to offer.
To get started, open your internet browser and go to chowcab.com or download the mobile app on your phone. The page above is their homepage and the main screen for the mobile app. They do offer service in 4 different locations on the Treasure Coast, so click on the one that is closest to your home. I live in Vero Beach, so I chose the last option.
A new tab opened and took me to the Vero Beach site. You can also jump right to this site by going directly to it at chowcabvero.com. From this page, you have some information about new restaurants that have been added to the service recently, and an estimated delivery time your food would arrive if you ordered right now. Click on the Restaurants link at the top of the page to see what restaurants are available to order from.
The restaurant icons that are in color are available to order from now, the ones that are grayed out, are not currently available for orders. You can still click on them to view their menu and view their hours of operation. We decided to order from Fishack.
This screen (scroll down to see all) shows you all of the menu items that are available for order from Fishack. Docked to the left side of the screen are all of the other restaurants that you can click on to navigate quickly to the other menus. One of the great things about Chow Cab, you can order from multiple restaurants, only paying a separate delivery fee for each one chosen.
Once you decide what you want to eat, click on the menu item and a pop-up comes up and allows you to specify any special requests about your item, then adds it to your cart once you click on the done button. A small window will display in the upper right-hand side with the items you have chosen. As you scroll up, it will dock itself out of the way so you can still view the menu. Keep adding items until your order is done, or click on another restaurant on the left-hand side of the screen if you wish to add any items from another restaurant, then proceed to checkout by clicking the checkout button.
Click on the new customer tab (or login if you are a returning customer) and enter your email address and a password to use for future orders. Follow the prompts to enter your delivery address and credit card information and complete your order. You will then be given an estimated time of delivery of your order. If you prefer, you can always call them to place your order and just use the website menus for reference.
We placed our order at 5:51pm and it showed up at our door by 6:24pm. Cheyenne was our delivery driver and she was prompt and courteous. Now I know you are asking, how fresh is the food and is it hot when I get it? As soon as the food arrived we set it up on a table and immediately took its temperature via a non-contact IR laser thermometer to see how hot they actually were.
First up is the Baked Trio Piccata. As you can see above from the picture the temperature of the dish shortly after it arrived was still 132 degrees. The food was freshly made and tasted great!
Next dish we ordered was the Fish and Chips and was still very hot when received. The other dish was baked and this one fried, so I believe that is the reason why this one was hotter than the other. The fish was still crispy, but the fries had softened a little bit from being in the closed container.
We ordered key lime pie for dessert and it was a little bit warmer than it should be. It was in its own styrofoam container and wrapped in a plastic bag, but it was put into the insulated bag with the rest of the hot food, which caused the higher temperature. We immediately put it in the fridge while we ate our food so it could cool down. The pie was still ok when we had it about an hour later, but it should have been kept in a cooler rather than the insulated bag with the hot food items.
In Conclusion:
We have ordered twice now from Chow Cab and both times we had a great experience. The food was freshly made and still hot when received. This time, delivery took a little over 30 minutes, and my previous time was about 40 minutes, so they are very quick. I think delivery times would also vary as to how busy they are and if you order during peak ordering times. The only issues that we ran into with the service was the temperature of the dessert and not being able to use the full amount of the gift card we had. Our order total exceeded the amount of the gift card and we were unable to apply a second payment method to pay the rest of our total. I talked to Jordan the owner about this and he said they are in the process of fixing this and it should be taken care of by the time this article is published.
Have you tried Chow Cab? What has your experience been with them? Sound off in the comments below and let me know your thoughts, or feel free to email me at thefoodguy@verovine.com with your questions or comments.
Use Coupon Code: VEROVINE for Free delivery.
Website Links: Chow Cab Main Website | Chow Cab Vero | Chow Cab Stuart | Chow Cab Jupiter | Chow Cab Port Saint Lucie
Give Them A Call!
- Jupiter, Tequesta, Palm Beach Gardens and Juno Beach – (561) 744-3222
- Stuart, Palm City, Hobe Sound, Jensen Beach, Port St. Lucie, Downtown Ft. Pierce, and Ft. Pierce Island (South Beach) – (772) 692-3287
- Vero Beach – (772) 234-3222
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