Personal Chef To Go Review

UPDATED March 18. 2024.
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Over a decade ago, Chef Gene Castelluccio and Chef Blair Grossman decided to start a business together and make restaurant-quality meals available for household consumption. That is how Personal Chef To Go was born.

At first, they focused on flavor and used a bunch of ingredients that are known to guarantee excellent taste but are not too great for your health, such as butter, cream, and a lot of sugar and salt. That is what their restaurant experience taught them. However, they soon changed their minds. They noticed there was a lack of meal delivery services that offered meals that are both tasty and healthy, so they kept their dedication to flavor but threw away all of the unhealthy ingredients and came up with the concept they are known for today: Live Smart, Eat Healthy. In the following sections of this Personal Chef To Go review, we will explore the details of the company’s offer, including the variety of meals, ordering flexibility, and pricing.

personal chef to go homepage

How Personal Chef To Go Works

Ordering from Personal Chef To Go is simple. You only need to choose a meal plan that works best for you and select a delivery date that perfectly suits your daily and weekly schedule and the company’s staff does the rest. Once you have placed your order, the chefs select all the fine ingredients necessary to make the dishes so delectable. Once the cooking is done, the meals are placed in refrigerated containers that keep them fresh and delish and they are handed over to Federal Express Ground or Second Day Express, depending on the delivery location. In a day or two, the meals reach the homes of customers all over the country.

The company’s menu includes 11-12 dishes every week and you can choose 5, 8 or 10 you like the most. If you do not want to choose the meals yourself or you do not make your choice before the weekly cutoff, you receive meals handpicked by the company’s chefs.

With Personal Chef To Go, there is no minimum subscription length. You get to choose when you want to receive or skip a delivery, you can modify your subscription at any time, and you can easily cancel if you no longer need its fresh, chef-prepared meals. However, it is important to note that if you want to skip a week or modify or cancel your subscription, you need to make the desired changes before the weekly deadline, which is on Monday at 11:45 am EST.

personal shef to go how it works

 

What Makes Personal Chef To Go Different

Personal Chef To Go wants you to know that opting for its services is a smart decision. Here is what its creators mean by that. The food the company ships is never frozen but always fresh and ready-to-eat. The dishes on the menus are primarily inspired by the Mediterranean cuisine, which is known not only for being amazingly tasty but also good for your heart. Another reason why its food is good for you is the fact that it does not contain any preservatives or additives.

Personal Chef To Go makes sure you never get bored with its food. The chefs have designed a rotating menu that changes every week for 9 weeks in a row and there is always a dozen of delicious options available. Apart from Mediterranean-inspired dishes, the menu features meals inspired by cuisines all over the planet. Therefore, this service takes you on a culinary tour around the world every week, which makes ordering food from Personal Chef To Go all the more exciting.

If you want to get to know the people who are in charge of providing you with healthy, delicious meals every week, check out the About Us section on the Personal Chef To Go website and learn more about the experience and attitudes of Chef Gene and Chef Blair. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all of which they use to keep you up to date with their plans and special offers.

If you are looking for a nice gourmet gift for a foodie friend, you can opt for Personal Chef To Go gift cards. They come in two forms – physical, sent via snail mail, and digital, sent via email. The gift options include single orders containing 5, 8 or 10 meals. Ground shipping costs are included in the price of the gift cards. All gift cards are non-refundable.

Meals and Recipes

Personal Chef To Go meal options
For Families
For Singles

So far in this Personal Chef To Go review, we have mentioned that the weekly menu includes 11-12 items, all suitable for lunch or dinner. The meals are available within 3 meal plans – 5-meal, 8-meal, and 10-meal plan. You can opt for either Chef’s Choice – the chefs choose your meals for you – or Your Choice – you handpick the meals in your order or you can set your preferences and have the meals selected for you based on your taste and needs. If you handpick the meals yourself, you can order multiple servings of the same dish and share the meals with family and friends.

personal-chef-to-go-review-1

All meals are designed with omnivores in mind. There are no vegetarian or vegan options. However, you can rule out the ingredients you wish to avoid. You can opt for meals free from fish, gluten, pork, shellfish, beef, soy, dairy, tree nuts or any combination of those.

Nutrition Facts

With Personal Chef To Go, the average calorie count per serving is normally below 400 calories. Each meal contains a single serving of 12-13 ounces. The meals usually have up to 10 grams of fat, between 10 and 40 grams of carbs, and between 26 and 53 grams of proteins. The company allows you to view weekly menus 9 weeks in advance, so you can easily decide which weeks you want to skip if the meals on the menu do not suit your taste.

Personal Chef To Go meals

Heating And Storage Tips

If you opt for Personal Chef To Go, you get fresh, never frozen meals that can last as many as 10-12 days in your fridge. Since the meals are designed to be enjoyed fresh and they can patiently wait for you to eat them for more than a week, you should not freeze them unless it is really necessary. In case you decide to pop some of the meals into your freezer, you should preferably consume them within a month.

The meals are always fully cooked and microwave-ready. When you are ready to eat, just heat the desired meal in a microwave for 3 minutes, grab a fork, and enjoy.

Pricing

Personal Chef To Go has perfectly straightforward pricing. The meals are not priced individually, but the price of your meals depends on how many meals per week you order. If you opt for the 5-meal plan, you pay $78 per week, which amounts to $15.60 per meal. The 8 meal plan costs $118 per week, that is, $14.75 per meal. Finally, the 10 meal plan comes at the price of $138 per week, which means that a single meal with this plan costs $13.80.

Shipping is free of charge in the eastern half of the US. For other locations, all deliveries come with a shipping fee that normally amounts to $45 per delivery.

Personal Chef To Go meal prices
Meals per weekPricePrice per meal
5$78.00$15.60
8$118.00$14.75
10$138.00$13.80

Delivery Areas

Personal Chef To Go delivers anywhere in the US and allows you to shop for yourself or place an order for someone else. The meals are shipped on Thursday every week and they should reach your home on Friday or Saturday, depending on your location. The company also has a commercial kitchen in Mechanicsville, VA, where it showcases its products, so you can sample the goods or purchase the same menu items as the ones shipped.

Personal Chef To Go Pros And Cons

To make sure Personal Chef To Go meets all your standards and expectations, it is important to know its biggest advantages and disadvantages. With a short overview of its pros and cons, you can easily decide if Personal Chef To Go is the right meal delivery service for you.

Pros
  • Healthy, gourmet dishes prepared by experienced chefs
  • Dozen of tasty items on the menu every week
  • Allergen-free meals
  • Flexible subscriptions
  • Free shipping in the eastern half of the US

Cons

  • No vegetarian or vegan meals

Sample Dishes

With Personal Chef To Go, you get delicious meals prepared by pro chefs at affordable prices. To find out what kinds of delights you will receive in your delivery, we have chosen a couple of sample dishes that accurately represents its offer and can help you decide if it is the right service for you.

Bottom Line

Personal Chef To Go is a healthy meal delivery service designed for everyone who wants to eat wholesome, gourmet food but simply cannot find the time to shop, cook, and clean up. It offers you the chance to choose the meal plan that goes along perfectly with your personal schedule and you also get to try out new dishes all the time, handpicked from the best world cuisines.

The prices are around average for restaurant-quality meals and shipping is free in the eastern US. Unfortunately, the company does not offer meal plans for special diets. However, it does offer meals free from some of the most common allergens and it is a particularly good choice for omnivorous foodies who want to enjoy the fine dining experience in the comfort of their own home.

User Reviews (9)

Personal Chef To Go is rated 3.5/5, based on 9 user reviews.

The Personal Chef To Go reviews listed below reflect the opinions and experiences of real users and are in no way influenced by the service reviewed here. Before publishing each review, our team checks whether it was submitted by an actual user in an effort to prevent false or spammy reviews.

  1. | September 5, 2018

    Maybe I have lower standards than some of the other reviewers here, but I do have to say that I really love PCTG food, it’s not the best food I tried, but it’s way better than the food I can prepare myself. 🙂

    • Stefanie Dreizen | January 3, 2021

      The food is really good. However a recent delivery response was concerning. There was a delay with the delivery so the food was in a USPS warehouse for four days. Their response was that food can last 10 days so partially frozen is still good. If it is entirely defrosted, contact us and we will credit a next order. While the delivery is not their fault, their response was unacceptable. A refund should have been issued immediately.

  2. | July 19, 2018

    Definitely not restaurant-grade food, but not bad for such a cheap meal delivery.

  3. | May 15, 2018

    AWFUL!!!! REALLY, REALLY BAD!!!! No flavor, no seasoning, meat like rubber, small servings, VERY expensive for nothing. They are also quiet abt the fact that you will continue to receive the food until you cancel. I thought I would receive it only if I ordered it. Nope! They also delivered a box to the wrong address!

    It was just terrible. Do not buy!!!

  4. | May 15, 2018

    They mailed an entire box to our address instead of my Aunt’s. We had no idea another would be sent. If we had, we would have cancelled it because the food is AWFUL! We called my Aunt and told her we had received another box. She didnlt want it becasue it was so bad so we decided to try it. I ate four of the meals and each one was just awful. There is little or no seasoning, they tell you to cook it for 2.5 minutes when it needs 5 but by then half the meal is overcooked. The gravy that comes with turkey has ZERO flavor and is watery. The turkey was like rubber. The beef dinner was the same! REALLY bad tasting beef with a rubber texture and some kind of sauce with NO flovor! That seems to be the trend with this company. I did have the shrimp which was somewhat better but it had a chemical taste to it. Even if the food was edible, the price for what you get is rediculous!! REALLY rediculous.

    Oh – they are also quiet abt letting you know you will keep getting the food until you cancel it. I thougt we would get it only if we ordered it!

    Please, look elsewhere.

  5. | October 14, 2016

    Everything was perfect, we’ll be ordering again!

  6. | September 26, 2016

    Awesome food! The office lunches are a great idea, so tasty and convenient!

  7. | August 4, 2016

    Not pricy, but not that good either.

  8. | July 11, 2016

    We could taste that the ingredients were fresh and good, but we found the meals themselves a bit bland. Anyway, pretty good food at a good price.

  9. | June 28, 2016

    This really isn’t restaurant-quality food. Not that bad, but not what I was expecting at all.

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* All the prices on this website are subject to change without notice. While we put a great deal of effort into making sure that all the prices are accurate, one or more products may have outdated prices. Please visit the specific product’s official website for exact prices.
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