Here at Grubhub, our employees are pretty obsessed with food. Every day, we’re making sure delicious food finds its way to your door….and to ours. Say what? Correct, we too order from Grubhub (so meta).
With our “What I Ate in a Week” series, you’ll get a sneak peek into the lives of actual — never not hungry—Grubhub team members. A nice benefit that happens to come with our jobs is what we call “mealperks”—our weekly Grubhub stipend. Clearly, we’re using this to get the best bites in town each and every week.
On deck, we have: Yera, an associate on our Public Relations team. Get the lowdown on her delivery highlights of the week and top ordering hacks.
Let’s Meet Yera
Hi! I’m Yera (pronounced like “Yeti” but with an -ah at the end!) and since I joined Grubhub’s Public Relations team in August, my orders have risen 5000% (this is not a proven statistic). I’m a naturalized Korean immigrant who grew up mostly in New Hampshire, went to school in Boston, moved to New York 4.5 years ago, and today lives in Nolita, Manhattan—a neighborhood surrounded by a galore of diverse, delicious food options.
In my spare time, I’m usually found: bopping around the city likely with a slice of pizza or a glass of Montepulciano in hand, scream-singing to Hellogoodbye and My Chemical Romance at Monster Cycle’s Emo Night spin class, or mentoring/volunteering at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, a nonprofit that empowers girls to live with joy, power and possibility. Lastly, this is the part where I should mention my favorite dishes, but that’s like asking me to choose between all my very non-existent children—it just can’t and won’t be done, okay?? I love them all equally!!!
And here are my top delivery eats from last week…
Lunch Date at Sophie’s Cuban:
Even though we don’t work together anymore, I’m still obsessed with a lot of my past coworkers-turned-bffs and try to see them as regularly as possible. Thankfully, my dear friend Alison works only a five-minute subway ride away and also has a passion for Sophie’s, so we planned a lunch in between work meetings to quickly catch up and pig out.
Sophie’s tends to get super busy (a true testament to their beautifully heart-warming Cuban food) and I’d rather use the time I’d spend waiting in line staring at my phone while saving a table for the two of us. The solve? I used Grubhub to express reorder my usual — ropa vieja (shredded beef stew), moro rice, white bean + avocado salad and tostones — for pickup and grabbed us a nice corner spot where I sat with my food and scrolled through social media while waiting for Alison to arrive. Gotta be smart and strategic about every minute during these mid-workday lunch dates, amirite?
Friday Treat from Sweet Churros:
Do you ever get a craving so badly that no matter how long you try to suppress it, no matter how much you tell yourself “you’re better than this,” no matter how much water you drink to try to trick your brain (I learned this tip in some magazine. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work), you just CAN’T. STOP. THINKING. ABOUT. THOSE. CHURROS??? It was a rainy Friday afternoon. Cold. Bitter. Dreary. Exactly how I was feeling. There was only one way to turn things around. After multiple dramatic ponderings aloud and just ONE “why not?” from my colleague, Natalie (that I took as a green light), I used my remaining mealperks to order a box of cinnamon-y heaven from Sweet Churros.
Regrets? I have none. These still-warm churros were perfectly crisp on the outside, impossibly doughy and chewy on the inside, and blanketed with the precisely right amount of cinnamon and sugar. Four of these beauts were neatly packaged into a box, meaning they were ideal for sharing the love (and the calories). Sometimes you just have to do the right thing, succumb to your cravings and, as the ancient Romans said: treat yo self.
Self-Care Dumplings from Dumpling Kingdom:
It’s the freakin’ weekend! And this time, I’m devoting an entire Saturday to self-care, which today means I will only leave my bed for bathroom breaks and food. I know—my life is truly glam. I spent the afternoon re-watching New Girl (number of times I’ve watched each episode is undisclosed) and when I saw the episode where Nick spends his day being the Dumpling Guy, it only made sense that I should spend my day being the Dumpling Girl!
So, I peeled my eyes off the TV for a few minutes to search Grubhub for dumplings—and landed on Dumpling Kingdom, a spot I’ve ordered from several times before and never disappoints. I ordered the dumpling combo (four steamed pork cabbage, four fried pork chive), some soup, opted in to Donate the Change, and 30-ish minutes later, my dumplings arrived. Mom, if you’re reading this, stop now—I climbed right back into my bed where I ate those dumplings like the true grownup I am. My mom might be appalled, but Nick Miller would be very proud.
Pasta Party for Two from Piccolo Cafe:
Pasta has a special place in my heart. Penne, gnocchi, bucatini, fusilli—you name it, I love it. In fact, I love it so much that my friends in college dubbed me The Pasta Monsta™. Is it flattering? Not so much. Is it appropriate? 100%.
So you can bet your bottom dollar that when my colleague Erin asked if I wanted to order from Piccolo Cafe with her at the *exact* same time that I was having a silent indecisive meltdown about what to order for lunch, I was elated. Even better, Piccolo Cafe offers 25% off for first-time Grubhub orders and since it was Erin’s first time, she added my fettuccine alla bolognese to her Grubhub cart along with her own pasta order, scoring us both a discount! We then used the life-and-friendship-saving Venmo integration in the Grubhub app to split our bill. So easy! So fun!
P.S. The fettuccine bolognese was *Italian chef kiss*—and all the lunches at Piccolo come with a side salad (great for at least pretending to eat a semi-healthy lunch) and a piece of focaccia! Allora!
Seoul Food from K’ook:
Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but I love winter, you guys. I genuinely appreciate the cold temperatures that winter brings. And not just because it means I don’t have to profusely sweat on the subway platform or because I think everyone looks cute in a bomber jacket. Winter weather means soup weather, and your girl REALLY *LOVES* soup.
While running a few errands after work, I knew only one thing could warm me up: something Korean, something spicy, something warm and soupy (these will also be my good luck items at my future wedding 😉). I opened Grubhub and went straight to my go-to (which the app even knows now!): K’ook.
K’ook is a play on “guk” or 국, meaning… you guessed it… soup. This East Village spot has a wide selection of different beloved Korean soups from ox bone marrow soup (seol leong tang) to spicier dishes such as Korean army base stew (budae jjigae) and spicy soft tofu stew (sundubu jjigae). I decided to go with the sundubu jjigae, which is cooked up with a good serving of mushrooms, zucchini and onions and LOTS of heat. So many of my favorite things! My favorite part of ordering Korean is that it almost always comes with banchan, small side dishes that often come complimentary. This means there’s always enough food for two or even three meals! I made sure to order while finishing my errands so that I only had to wait 15-ish minutes after I got home to meet the super friendly driver who delivers my meal every time. K’ook, you never let me down!
