“Ridiculously convenient, 100% healthy chef-prepared meals using real ingredients” is the promise made front and centre by the Gourmet Dinner Service website.
No doubt an enticing promise for many people wanting healthy meals without the hassle of cooking.
Having reviewed almost every meal delivery service in Australia, it was time to give the highly-rated frozen meal delivery ‘Gourmet Dinner Service’ a try. Read on to see what I thought of their website, delivery, and meal experience.
Gourmet Dinner Service Prepared Meals Review
Summary
Gourmet Dinner Service offers a range of frozen, chef-prepared meals catering to various portion sizes, from single servings to family meals. The service stands out for its convenience and home-cooked experience, though it can feel pricey, and its website navigation may pose challenges for new customers.
Overall
-
Ordering - Website - 6/10
6/10
-
Food - Quality - 8.5/10
8.5/10
-
Ordering - Meal Choice - 7/10
7/10
-
Food - Taste - 8.5/10
8.5/10
-
Ordering - Delivery - 6/10
6/10
-
Value For Money - 7/10
7/10
Pros
- Incredibly convenient with no lock-in subscription.
- Variety of portion sizes allows for great flexibility.
- Meals taste fresh and retain texture well after reheating.
Cons
- While the overall menu is extensive, individual portion options are limited.
- High delivery fees.
- Website can be difficult to understand and navigate.
It’s important to start this review by saying that Gourmet Dinner Service is owned and operated by the same people who run Dietlicious.
In fact, their menus have significant crossover and you’re able to order Dietlicious meals from Gourmet Dinner Service (and vice versa). After trying both services, I’m confident the meals are cooked in the same kitchen and the main differences are:
- Meal Size (Dietlicious meals are lower calorie)
- Branding
Therefore, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of crossover in my opinion on this review with my opinion on the Dietlicious review.
Page Contents
Getting Started with Gourmet Dinner Service
As I mentioned in my intro, Gourmet Dinner Service (GDS) are a frozen meals provider, meaning that every one of their meals is delivered frozen in cardboard containers.
Ordering from GDS is a one-off activity, with no option to subscribe. That’s great because there’s no risk of being hit with unintended charges from a subscription you thought you’d cancelled. You can also order meals on a schedule suitable for you, rather than a fixed weekly/fortnightly delivery.
The menu is split into the following sub-menus:
- Meals for 1
- Mains for 2
- Family
- Salads
- Side Dishes
- Desserts
- Finger Food
- Entertaining
There’s quite a bit of crossover between these menus, with meals being visible in multiple menus. For example, the ‘Finger Food’ and ‘Entertaining’ menus are very similar.
One aspect I immediately liked about GDS was their range of meal sizes, with options for 1 person all the way up to a 6-person family dinner. Where most services lean into single-portion meals, GDS have a wide variety of multi-portion dishes.
The other way to order is through “Meal Boxes” which are pre-configured packs that provide a small discount on meals but can’t be personalised.
Meal Variety and Options
Understanding how many ‘Gourmet Dinner Service’ meals are available is a bit tricky with the menu displaying Dietlicious meals as well. Whilst there is a filter option to only show Gourmet Dinner Service meals, it seems that some meals aren’t tagged correctly.
My calculations suggest:
- 11 ‘Meals for 1’
- 27 ‘Mains for 2’
- 17 ‘Family’ meals
- 15 ‘Sides’
This demonstrates one of the limitations of the GDS menu. Despite having quite a large menu, each individual set of meal options is quite limited. In particular, the ‘Meals for 1’ menu is very underwhelming.
Therefore, to get the most out of the GDS menu, you need to be flexible on ordering different meal sizes and customising them for your individual needs. When ordering, you can easily mix and match between menus.
The main difference between their menu options is the type of meals on offer. Here’s a rough guide for how to navigate their different menus:
| Menu | Description | Example Meals |
| Meals for 1 | Full meals for a single portion | – Chicken Satay with Coconut Rice – Beef Hot Pot with Couscous – Roast Lamb with Gravy + Mash |
| Mains for 2 | A ‘main’ component that needs additional sides to make a full meal for 2 people. | – Pulled Pork Quesadilla – Lamb Souvlaki Skewers – Southern Indian Coconut Chicken – Tomato & Goats Cheese Tarts |
| Family | A ‘main’ component that needs additional sides to make a full meal for 4-6 people. | – Bolognese Pasta Sauce – Greek Style Roast Chicken – Chicken & Spinach Meatballs – Bacon Crusted Mac n’ Cheese |
| Sides | A ‘side’ component that serves 1-6 people. | – Roast Vegetables – Cauliflower Gratin – Sweet Potato Mash |
On top of these, there’s also an exciting ‘Dessert’ menu with 11 different options, as well as the ‘Finger Food’ & ‘Entertaining’ menus that contain a range of frozen canape’s.
With very limited rotation of meals, I think the GDS menu would get repetitive quickly if you were relying on them for every meal. Instead, this feels like a menu that’s more suited to having some spare frozen meals in your freezer instead of reaching for takeaways.
Nutritional information
To access nutritional information for each meal, you need to click into the meal itself. When you do this, the website actually forgets any meals you’ve selected unless you actively add them to your Order. Just something to watch out for!
Gourmet Dinner Service provide detailed nutritional information, including sodium and fibre values. Potential allergens are highlighted in the ingredients list.
I never had any issues with missing nutritional details, unlike some alternative meal delivery services.
Special diets and food intolerances
Gourmet Dinner Service offer filters on their menu for:
- No Added Gluten
- No Added Dairy
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Diabetic
- Coriander Free
- Low Salt
- Contains Nuts
Some of these filters have very limited options, so if you’re on a special diet your experience will be restricted to a relatively small number of meals.
Gourmet Delivery Service also prepare all their meals in the same kitchen, so can’t guarantee the absence of cross-contamination if your allergy is serious. Like most prepared meal services, there’s no ability to customise meals and remove ingredients.
“Our meals may contain traces of dairy, egg, wheat, barley, rye, oats, gluten, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, peanuts, tree nuts, other nuts, sesame, seeds, soy, sulphites and/or capsicum. Gourmet Dinner Service and Dietlicious cannot guarantee a total absence of any of these products in any of our meals.”
https://www.gourmetdinnerservice.com.au/faq
Delivery Options
Gourmet Dinner Service deliver meals to the following areas:
- Sydney Metro & Regional NSW
- Brisbane Metro & Regional QLD
- Melbourne Metro & Regional VIC
- ACT
That means anyone in WA, NT, or TAS are out of luck unfortunately.
Each postcode has their own set of weekly delivery days, which you can select when ordering. That means the most you’ll wait for your meals is up to a week.
Here in Sydney, GDS can deliver on any weekday which is a great service.
Unfortunately, delivery does come at quite a significant cost. Regular delivery costs $16.50 and Express Delivery (order by 8:30am for same day) is a whopping $37.50.
There’s also an additional charge of $3.50 if you want to add a thermal liner and extra ice gel pack to your order, critical if your order might be sitting around for more than a couple of hours. This is usually free with most alternative services.
If you’re in Brisbane (Meadowbrook) or Sydney (Brookvale), you could save some cash by picking up directly from their warehouse.
How much does Gourmet Dinner Service Cost?
Gourmet Dinner Service meals are all priced individually making it difficult to compare their pricing against competitors. To help, I’ve provided an average price across their core menus below:
| Menu | Average Menu Price | Average Price Per Serving |
| Meals for 1 | $15.50 | $15.50 |
| Mains for 2 | $23.00 | $11.50 (sides required) |
| Family | $38.00 | $9.50 (sides required) |
Sides are between $3 and $5 per portion, although you can save a bit of money by cooking/preparing your own side dishes.
Due to the variable pricing, some meals can feel reasonably priced, while others feel quite expensive.
One example where I struggled to justify the price was a 2-person serving of Basmati Rice (290g) for $5.50. The equivalent packet rice at Coles which is just as easy to cook comes in at around $3.50 albeit for 250g.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a minimum order of $75. This is in line with most of their competitors and is the equivalent of 6-7 portions of food.
Featured Service
My Gourmet Dinner Service Review Box
My GDS box arrived in the morning, and I didn’t have time to pick it up from my apartment building until early afternoon. By the time I picked it up (around 4 hours), the meals had unfortunately started to defrost.
I hadn’t opted for the extra thermal liner, and I fear that another couple of hours would have fully defrosted all the food. I’d highly recommend opting for the extra liner & ice pack if you might have to leave the box for more than a few hours before getting the meals into a freezer.
The box itself isn’t branded in any way, except for a sticker on top. In my case, despite ordering from Gourmet Dinner Service I received a Dietlicious sticker. Remember I mentioned they’re cooked out of the same kitchen?
Fortunately, the meals themselves were all branded Gourmet Dinner Service and each label had clearly printed heating instructions and an ingredients list.
How’s The Food?
Time for me to dig into my selection of GDS meals.
The first thing I noticed is that each meal eats more like reheating home-cooked food than eating a traditional “pre-prepared” microwave meal. For example, commonly soggy, disappointing ingredients like rice and vegetables retained a pleasant texture despite being microwaved.
The meals consistently packed great flavours without every really blowing me away. Importantly, there weren’t any bad meals in my box suggesting you can’t really go wrong with a GDS delivery.
The menu is also full of meals that are carefully designed to retain a lot of their flavour and structure when reheating, so it felt like I was eating fresh-cooked meals with the huge advantage of not having to worry about best before dates.
Meals didn’t skimp on their protein source either, compared to alternatives that commonly bulk their meals with cheaper carbohydrates.
Meals I tried
I was able to try 7 meals, 3 sides, and a dessert. I wanted to talk through a few of them to give you a sense of what a GDS meal is like.
The Braised Chicken with Mushrooms was an absolute winner. Served with a side of the Sweet Potato Mash, there was a huge amount of chicken for 2 people and lots of delicious creamy sauce that was quickly devoured.
I’ve always found “roast” style dishes to be very underwhelming because the meat often reheats poorly. Thankfully not the case with GDS as the Roast Lamb remained tender covered in plenty of tasty gravy.
I also want to talk about the Pork + Veal Meatballs. It’s a meal that I’m still on the fence about because the meatballs themselves were delicious and plenty filling for two people, but the reheating process quickly nukes the cheese into a puddle before cooling into a rock-hard slab.
I’d prefer to add my own cheese.
Reheating the prepared meals
Each meal had specific instructions to use the Defrost feature on your microwave for 5-10 minutes before placing it on full power for another 2-3 minutes.
I quickly learned that my microwave has a less powerful defrost feature, resulting in some meals not being fully reheated after the recommended time. This isn’t the fault of GDS, but a warning to adjust your reheating times based on the performance of your microwave.
You could also take meals out of the freezer 24 hours before eating to defrost fully, but that does rather take away from the convenience.
My Overall Thoughts on Gourmet Dinner Service
There are plenty of reasons to like Gourmet Dinner Service. Their meals are tasty, filling, contain high quality ingredients, and are highly convenient.
The menu has options that include both individual meals, as well as main ingredients to feed anywhere from 2 to 6 people. This makes GDS a one-stop shop if you need meals for a variety of purposes.
They’re also NOT a subscription business. That means no stressing about multiple orders or weekly deliveries. Just add what you want to your cart and that’s all you’ll receive.
However, there are definitely a few factors that limit my love for GDS:
- Firstly, I think their meals are overpriced by a couple of dollars each which really adds up over an entire order. Especially when delivery is also expensive. These are high quality meals, but they aren’t organic or exclusively free-range which would justify the prices.
- Secondly, I find their website unintuitive to navigate around and understand. It becomes easier once you’re familiar with the navigation and how their menus are structured, but most new customers will struggle a bit.
- Lastly, GDS might have 50+ options on the menu but these are spread across the different portion sizes. That means if you’re wanting to buy just “Meals for 1” you only really have 11 options plus the Dietlicious menu.
Even considering those limitations, I think Gourmet Dinner Service is perfect for anyone who needs tasty spare meals in the freezer, especially if you might need to cook for a varying amount of people without the time/mobility to run to the supermarket at short notice. You can’t go wrong having these ready to go and stocking up every few months.
Alternatives to Gourmet Dinner Service
The most similar service available currently would be The Dinner Ladies, who I’ve reviewed a few times whilst running Food Box Mate.
Whilst both services offer variable prices, my experience suggests The Dinner Ladies are slightly cheaper, and they offer free delivery on any orders over $200 which is a huge benefit.
Check out more details on my Dinner Ladies review.
I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences with Gourmet Dinner Service – were they similar to mine? Did you find my Gourmet Dinner Service review useful? Let me know in the comments section below!
