Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen is now selling prepared family meals. Photo by LunahZon Photography

Since moving to its current location last year, Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen has been slowly adding to its offerings. What started as a company hosting cooking classes in the back of Atherton Market has grown into a beloved Charlotte brand that now serves a Saturday brunch, sells condiments, and caters boxed lunches and meals. They recently added their Family Table Meals to the menu, pre-made portioned dinners that you can pick up and serve at home or have delivered.

We like to check things out before we recommend them to you, and being new parents, there couldn’t be a better time for us to have someone else do our cooking. The meals come in two sizes, small and large, which serve four and eight, respectively. Options include chicken breast, salmon, eggplant, and pot roast, with eight sides to choose from. The proteins are pre-portioned, and each meal includes salad; dessert can be added on.

“We wanted to create the kind of service we would want to order from on a regular basis,” says Alyssa Wilen, chef and co-owner of Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen with her husband, Andrew. In fact, they might be bringing home the meals for themselves — the couple gave birth to their first child, a baby girl, just over a month ago.

Orders need to be made 12 hours in advance, and you can select to have your meals hot or cold at pick-up time. Ordering online is extremely simple; you’re taken through your selections based on the size meal you ordered.

With Jon’s parents in town helping us out with baby J.J., we ordered two meals for four. The first we tried was the seared salmon, which we picked up at 4 p.m. and ate it that night. I selected the chimichurri sauce to go with it. One of the things I was most surprised by was how well the salmon was cooked, even though we had to reheat it before dinner. It was still very moist, and the portion sizes were just right. The chimichurri sauce had a bright acidity to it that really enhanced the salmon. The orzo salad ended up being my favorite side; the Mediterranean flavors were bold and the salad held well even when I ate the leftovers a few days later. The only side I’d skip next time was the crispy root vegetable cakes, but that’s on us — we were too hungry to follow the provided cooking instructions and put them in the microwave instead, so they lost the crispiness.

Two days later, we ate the French cut roasted chicken breast, which we ordered with an herbed pan sauce, and sides of caramelized broccoli and roasted carrots. Even after sitting in the fridge, the chicken was tender. The broccoli had a delicate sweetness to it, and was a close second to the orzo salad.

The thing we like most about Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen’s Family Table Meals, however, is the sourcing. Just like the products used in the company’s cooking classes, the meals source clean ingredients from local farmers. The small meals range from $45 to $55 for four servings, which we found more than reasonable for a locally sourced meal with a salad, entrée, sides, and dinner roll. That’s not to mention the amount of time you save by picking up a meal or two on your lunch break instead of cooking it all yourself.

Not all of us have time to head to the farmer’s market each weekend to make restaurant-quality meals the following week, as much as we wish we could. And while services like Blue Apron help streamline our cooking time, they aren’t supporting our local farmers. We loved these meals because Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen supports our community, and made our week much easier. —Kristen Wile