With the coronavirus still looming and many shoppers still fearful of the grocery store, folks have started turning back to meal subscription services!

Remember the Blue Apron craze a couple years ago? HelloFresh?

We were contacted by Splendid Spoon, an entirely vegan, plant-based meal subscription service. They sent us a free box of goodies to try and to write an honest review for them.

So, this is it. An honest review of Splendid Spoon.

Hopefully the review is helpful for you!

An Honest Splendid Spoon Review

About Splendid Spoon

Splendid Spoon is a subscription meal delivery service that caters to a pretty specific demographic.
Their tagline does a great job explaining:

“Busy can be healthy.”

This is their take on what they offer: “Splendid Spoon offers ready-to-eat, nourishing, plant-based smoothies, soups and grain bowls. Our plans are designed to create healthy routines for breakfast and lunch, so you can reach your health goals. Each meal contains fresh plant-based, gluten-free, and GMO-free ingredients - all clean ingredients.”

Splendid Spoon’s focus is on physical health through food. Each meal is meant to be quick, fulfilling, nutrient-dense, and plant-based!

All Splendid Spoon meals are vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, and low in sugar and sodium.

High-quality ingredients. Nourishing meals. Easily-prepared food.

Here’s how it works. There are currently three different plans to choose from:

The breakfast package (5 smoothies)
The breakfast and lunch package (5 smoothies, 5 bowls)
The breakfast, lunch, and reset package (5 smoothies, 5 bowls, and 1 full-day reset)

Smoothie flavors include mint chip, pumpkin spice, strawberry goji, and many many more.

Bowls vary between soups and grain bowls from all sorts of different ethnicities. Examples of some bowls: lemon wild rice & broccoli, Mexican tomato chili, Moroccan lentil, garden minestrone, brown rice taco, and so many more. There are seriously tons to choose from!

The “reset” bowls are mostly light soups and are designed to get your digestive system back on the right track.

Lastly, there are a couple “wellness shots” that are meant to boost your immune system. The two are a detox shot (made with aloe and moringa) and a wellness shot (made with ginger and lemon).

Our Review of Splendid Spoon

Our review starts at the beginning - the delivery.

Our apartment was buzzed by the delivery guy and we let him in. The box was fairly large but also pretty lightweight. Here’s the full box so you can get an idea of how big it is.

We cracked open the tape with a kitchen knife and went to extract the insides. The box is refrigerated on the inside with dry ice and insulation, so it’s best to get it out and into the refrigerator ASAP. Our box had no dry ice remaining, but everything was still exceptionally cold so there was no concern about the food being spoiled.

One huge bonus which was great for the soul is that EVERYTHING in this box is totally recyclable (if not edible). Even the insulation is paper-based and can be recycled!

everything in the Splendid Spoon box was recyclable! +1 for the environment

Five smoothies, five bowls, and a wellness shot were included in this box. They looked vibrant and absolutely scrumptious upon opening the box.

all of the splendid spoon food options we received

A lot of times with subscription services, common complaints are that the food comes spoiled, broken, damaged, or otherwise inedible. This was not at all the case for Splendid Spoon. Hats off to their logistics department.

From left to right, here is what we received in our Splendid Spoon package:

Smoothies:

Dragon Fruit Berry
AB&J
Blueberry Coconut
Mint Chip
Green Matcha

Bowls:

Aloo Gobi Quinoa
Moroccan Spiced Buckwheat
Cuban Black Bean
Brown Rice Taco
Kabocha Congee

Here is a closeup of the packaging for one of the bowls:

packaging for Splendid Spoon’s Cuban black bean bowl

You’ll notice that the ingredients are surprisingly real, mostly fresh vegetables, grains, herbs, and spices, and often organic. Splendid Spoon does not mess around with ingredients. Very high quality.

nutritional information for one bowl of Splendid Spoon’s Cuban black bean bowl

Similarly, the nutritional information also focuses on health. No added sugars, no trans fats, very low fat in general, low sodium and cholesterol. Splendid Spoon is definitely providing a healthy option here, that’s for sure. The 460 calorie total for the bowl is a great amount for lunch, as it is intended for.

Review of the Smoothies

Overall, the amount of smoothie you get in a single bottle is a lot! We often didn’t finish a single bottle in its entirety and would store half of it or more in the fridge for later since they were so filling.

We think it’s important to frame the context of Splendid Spoon a little bit. Their bowls and smoothies are meant to be healthy. So, you won’t be finding the heaps of added sugar that you see at Tropical Smoothie or Smoothie King. You’ll find healthy smoothie ingredients blended up to give you vital nutrients in an on-the-go medium.

It’s important to re-frame your idea of what “sweet” is. If you’ve been drinking sugary drinks and eating foods with tons of added sugar, then these smoothies are NOT going to be “sweet,” to you. You have to reset your tastebuds to get acclimated to this style of product.

With that said, here were our thoughts on each of the smoothies we received:

Dragon Fruit Berry

This smoothie was pretty decent. The consistency was a little watery, and the flavor was a bit lacking. The mix of things like avocado and dragon fruit made for a flavor that was mingling between savory and sweet. Ultimately, not bad.

AB&J

This was one of our favorites. Had just the right balance of thickness and sweetness. The banana and almond butter flavors went really well together, similar to the popular banana and peanut butter combo.

Blueberry Coconut

This was the worst smoothie. And not in the way where it was the least best, but still good. It was not good. We are not huge fans of coconut, which could have been the main reason, but the flavor was just bitter and not tasty to us. The consistency with the physical flakes of coconut was also not very appetizing.

Mint Chip

This smoothie was one of the better ones. We were sort of off-put by the consistency, since there were some chunks involved in this smoothie as well, but they were more tolerable since the flavor was good.

Green Matcha

This smoothie wasn’t outwardly gross like the Blueberry Coconut one was, but it was nothing to write home about either. Flavor was a bit dull with a mishmash of ingredients that typically don’t add a lot of flavor to the equation.

Overall on Smoothies

For us, there seemed to be a lot of additional ingredients that try to make the smoothies seem “exotic” or to present themselves as unique and trendy. When the mission is to not use any added sugar and to provide actually healthy products, there is a fine line to walk across for flavor.

We think these smoothies likely sacrificed too much flavor in exchange for healthiness. We would have preferred simpler smoothies that packed a stronger punch. Maybe 3-4 main, staple ingredients instead of 9. They ultimately seemed a bit diluted and underpowered. We think Splendid Spoon should look at what Joybol (by Kellogg’s) is doing to maybe learn a little bit from how their smoothies could improve. You can have health and flavor together - it is achievable.

The other thing to consider is price. When Kate was drinking her first Splendid Spoon smoothie, she said, “Oh, this is pretty good. I would totally pay a few dollars for this. How much does it cost?” based on our research, the cheapest Splendid Spoon option approximates to about $9 per smoothie. It’s clear that this subscription service is meant for a particular type of person - a high income earner that has a pretty demanding job and doesn’t have time for making their own food during the day. We could make super quick and tasty oatmeal for a week with $9. Not quite sure if the value is there.

However, there are a ton of other smoothies to choose from, and it’s possible our randomly-selected assortment just didn’t totally mesh with our tastebuds.

Review of the Bowls

The bowls were also a perfect size for a lunch. The portion is just enough to get you really satisfied but not too much to have felt like you overate. Due to the tons of good fiber and nutrients, they keep you full until dinner pretty easily too.

As far as the selection, it’s very impressive. Splendid Spoon has offerings from every nationality, every type of cuisine you can think of. From Indian, to Moroccan, to Mexican, to Italian, to Chinese, you can almost certainly find something for you.

Aloo Gobi Quinoa

This was one of our favorites. We are huge fans of cauliflower, mushrooms, and potatoes, so this veggie bowl with turmeric and curry powder hit the SPOT. Super savory, great flavor, very filling, and honestly my mouth is watering just typing this. Would recommend.

Moroccan Spiced Buckwheat

This one was not as tasty. Going in, we were expecting the flavor to be relatively savory. We had not had Moroccan food before this. The mix of broccoli and butternut squash and the sweetness of the ginger just wasn’t our style.

Cuban Black Bean

This was an interesting one! The ingredients as far as the protein (plantains, black beans) and the grain (brown rice) were really solid. The blend of all the non-spice ingredients were smart picks. However, the flavor was a little underpowered, so we added some cheddar cheese and ate the bowl using tortilla chips (yummy - would recommend). Would have liked to see a little more seasoning in this one but otherwise it was yummy.

Brown Rice Taco

This was one of the best bowls. We are also huge lovers of Mexican food so it’s not too surprising. The ingredients of this bowl made for a very fresh-tasting lunch, with a decent amount of flavor. We also added cheddar to this one and used tortilla chips as the delivery method. Similarly to the Cuban bowl, we felt it to a little underpowered for seasonings, but not as drastically.

Kabocha Congee

We were honestly skeptical of this one at first. It did not look very appetizing and we had never had congee before and the flavors didn’t sound super up our alley. However, upon trying it, we actually enjoyed it quite a bit. However, we both found the inclusion of the pumpkin seeds to really detract from the dish. We would have much preferred the bowl without the pumpkin seeds and presented more as a soup. The crunch and flavor just didn’t feel right to us.

Overall on Bowls

Compared to the smoothies, we were much more impressed by the bowls that Splendid Spoon had to offer. They were the right amount of filling with strong, balanced nutrition, and they were pretty tasty!

We will return to price, though. The price of each bowl is $9, just like the smoothies. And while they were good, it’s hard to justify paying that price per bowl when there are less expensive alternatives out there that could give you much more bang for your buck. There is definitely a niche for this though. If you’re busy with work, on the go, and don’t have time to make breakfast or lunch and want something super nutritious and plant-based, then this might be a good deal for you.

Summary of our Splendid Spoon Review

The bowls are good. The smoothies are decent. The price is premium. The packaging is sustainable!

We think there is definitely something valuable being offered here. For those who want healthy, nutritious, plant-based meals that are quick and delivered to your doorstep, this is probably the program for you.

Hopefully they work to continuously improve their flavor profile, especially for the smoothies. We think the package is worth trying out, at least for one week, to see if it makes your life a little easier and stress-free. Just remember - this is a health-oriented product, so don’t wait around for the smoothies to give you an insulin spike. They probably won’t, which is actually a great thing.

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