Tovala Family Meals Review: Good Food, Lots of Salt
Tovala Family Meals Review: Good Food, Lots of Salt
Tovala 家庭餐评测：美味，但盐分超标
Rating: 7/10 评分：7/10
WIRED: A smart oven offers fresh-cooked, scannable-recipe meals with nearly no prep time. Family meals pack four hefty servings into a tiny oven. The oven is a good oven even without the meal plan. WIRED 观点： 这款智能烤箱提供无需准备、扫描即做的现成餐点。家庭餐模式能将四份大分量的餐点塞进小巧的烤箱中。即便不订阅餐食计划，这台烤箱本身也非常出色。
TIRED: Sodium and fat can reach stratospheric levels. International meals are not faithful, nor successful. You have to buy the oven to eat the food. 不足之处： 钠和脂肪含量可能高得惊人。国际风味餐点既不地道，也不成功。而且，你必须购买这台烤箱才能享用这些餐点。
Tovala is a meal-delivery service. It is also an oven. And in some ways, it also feels like a very specific vision of the future. Tovala is not quite a robot chef, exactly. But it’s not not a robot chef, either. It’s a robot chef as imagined in old science fiction, or an episode of Wallace and Gromit. Tovala 既是一项送餐服务，也是一台烤箱。在某种程度上，它让人感觉像是对未来的一种独特构想。Tovala 并不完全算是一个“机器人厨师”，但它也确实具备了机器人厨师的特质。它就像是老科幻电影或《超级无敌掌门狗》（Wallace and Gromit）中想象的那种机器人厨师。
The idea behind Tovala is simple. You get a box in the mail with a full complement of ingredients, boxed up individually alongside vacuum-packed proteins. Here is your Parmesan-Crusted Chicken Breast with Cheesy Stuffed Shells and Garlic Bread. Or here is your Togarashi Chicken Breast and Sweet Soy Noodles. Tovala 的理念很简单。你会收到一个邮寄来的盒子，里面装满了各种配料，每种配料都单独包装，蛋白质类食材则采用真空包装。比如，你可以享用帕尔马干酪脆皮鸡胸肉配芝士馅贝壳面和蒜蓉面包，或者七味粉鸡胸肉配甜酱油面。
The only cooking implement you will need to prep your food is a pair of scissors to open the little bags. Then, deposit each ingredient in the proper place into a series of aluminum trays, and pop them in the Tovala oven. Hold up a little QR code to a laser on the oven, and the little combi-smart oven will do the rest—moving itself through a series of preprogrammed steps. The oven steams, it convects, it broils, it bakes, all of its own accord. 准备食物时，你唯一需要的工具就是一把剪刀，用来剪开小包装袋。然后，将每种配料放入相应的铝箔托盘中，再放进 Tovala 烤箱。对着烤箱的激光扫描仪出示二维码，这台小型组合式智能烤箱就会自动完成剩下的工作——按照预设的程序自动运行。烤箱会自动进行蒸汽、热风对流、烧烤和烘焙，全程无需人工干预。
It’s ingenious in its way, one of very few meal kits to offer such simple preparation while still offering a genuine fresh-cooked meal. (And I should know. I’ve tested 20 meal-delivery services in the past year.) But when I first tested the Tovala meal kit and oven last year, I noted that the little oven had one very serious limitation: It only made one meal at a time. This capped its potential audience to solo diners or couples who don’t mind eating consecutively. 这种方式非常巧妙，它是极少数能在提供简单准备过程的同时，还能保证餐点新鲜现做的餐包服务之一。（我对此很有发言权，因为过去一年我测试了 20 家送餐服务。）但去年我第一次测试 Tovala 餐包和烤箱时，我注意到这台小烤箱有一个严重的局限性：它一次只能做一份餐点。这将其潜在用户限制在了单身人士或不介意轮流用餐的情侣身上。
Tovala has responded this year with family meals, which implausibly manage to stuff two to four often hefty servings into a single tiny countertop oven. I tried five, ranging from Italian sausage and gnocchi to togarashi chicken. They are often delicious, with surprisingly juicy meat, full flavor, and simple saucing. But nutrition will be in the eye of the beholder: It’s a lot like eating restaurant meals every day. 今年，Tovala 推出了家庭餐模式作为回应，它竟然能将两到四份分量十足的餐点塞进这台小巧的台式烤箱中。我尝试了五种餐点，从意式香肠配面疙瘩到七味粉鸡肉，应有尽有。这些餐点通常很美味，肉质出奇地鲜嫩，风味浓郁，酱汁简单。但营养方面就见仁见智了：这感觉就像每天都在吃餐厅的饭菜。
Each meal costs anywhere from $9 to $13 a serving, plus an $11 delivery charge per box. In exchange for buying meals for six weeks, you get a hefty discount on a powerful little oven, whose app also offers guidance on a number of other mostly automated recipes—including surprisingly excellent runny eggs to drape over avocado toast. 每份餐点的价格在 9 到 13 美元之间，每盒另收 11 美元运费。如果你承诺购买六周的餐点，就能以大幅折扣买到这台功能强大的小烤箱。其配套的应用程序还提供了许多其他自动化食谱的指导，包括制作出令人惊艳的流心蛋，配在牛油果吐司上非常完美。
Tovala is an outlier in the world of meal-delivery services, in that the company seems to want to completely change the way you cook at home. For this, you will require the specialized Tovala smart oven, either the $299 original oven or an upgraded Smart Oven Pro ($349) equipped with a steam function. I highly recommend that you spring for the steam oven, assuming you like juicy meat or good toast. Tovala 在送餐服务领域是一个异类，因为它似乎想要彻底改变你在家做饭的方式。为此，你需要使用专门的 Tovala 智能烤箱，可以选择 299 美元的原版烤箱，或者配备蒸汽功能的升级版 Smart Oven Pro（349 美元）。如果你喜欢鲜嫩的肉类或口感好的吐司，我强烈建议你选择蒸汽烤箱。
But it’s doubtful you’ll pay full price for the oven. If you order six weeks of meals from the Tovala meal plan, you end up with a hefty discount, down to $119 for the Pro and just $69 for the non-steaming original. To further sweeten the pot, Tovala offers a 100-day money-back guarantee if you don’t like your oven—amply more time than you’d need to try your six weeks of meals if you’d like. 不过，你大概率不需要支付烤箱的全价。如果你订阅六周的 Tovala 餐食计划，就能获得大幅折扣，Pro 版降至 119 美元，不带蒸汽功能的原版仅需 69 美元。为了进一步增加吸引力，Tovala 还提供 100 天退款保证，如果你不喜欢这台烤箱，完全有足够的时间在试用六周餐点后决定是否退货。
Most recipes take from 15 minutes to a half hour, then out pops a surprisingly moist chicken breast crusted with whatever spices or crust you happened to put on it. The same goes for a mountain of saucy gnocchi, or a luxuriantly thick cut of filet mignon. Each will taste, perhaps, a little better than expected—and certainly better than nearly all preprepared meals that involve a microwave. 大多数食谱的烹饪时间在 15 到 30 分钟之间，出炉后的鸡胸肉鲜嫩多汁，表面裹着你添加的各种香料或脆皮。面疙瘩或厚实的菲力牛排也是如此。每道菜的味道可能都比预期的要好，而且肯定比几乎所有需要微波炉加热的预制餐点要美味得多。
Indeed, among the many meal-delivery services I’ve tested, Tovala perhaps comes closest to what many people imagine when they think of the words “meal kit.” Assembly is easy, the food is fresh, and the oven offers plenty of labor-saving help. 事实上，在我测试过的众多送餐服务中，Tovala 或许最接近人们心目中对“餐包”（meal kit）的定义。组装简单，食材新鲜，烤箱也提供了极大的省力帮助。
Each week’s box from Tovala contains anywhere from four to a dozen meals, with $11 per box in shipping. So if you ordered the bare minimum of four single-serving meals, you’ll pay $63 a week. This amounts to more than scratch cooking, of course, but less than takeout. Serving size for each meal ranges from 500 calories to a thousand. Tovala 每周的餐盒包含 4 到 12 餐不等，每盒运费 11 美元。如果你订购最少 4 份单人餐，每周需支付 63 美元。这当然比自己从头做饭要贵，但比点外卖便宜。每餐的热量在 500 到 1000 卡路里之间。
There are about 45 options each week, but very few of these will be vegetarian. Carb-conscious or “gluten-friendly” options fare better, but note that Tovala does not promise full-gluten safety if you’re celiac. 每周大约有 45 种选择，但素食选项很少。注重碳水化合物或“无麸质友好”的选项相对多一些，但请注意，如果你患有乳糜泻，Tovala 并不保证完全无麸质安全。
If you’re not making a Tovala meal—or one of the myriad recipes on the Tovala app that don’t require meal delivery—the oven is not much of an air fryer but otherwise competitive with some of the best countertop ovens on the market. Heat is precise and mostly even, as measured with temperature probes. The app offers programmed recipes for even basic ingredients, with steam cycles to keep food from drying out. The oven also makes excellent toast as long as you remember to use the middle rack of the oven. (If you use the bottom rack, you’ll scorch your bread.) 如果你不是在做 Tovala 的餐点，或者使用 Tovala App 上那些无需订餐的食谱，这台烤箱虽然算不上出色的空气炸锅，但在其他方面足以与市场上最好的台式烤箱竞争。经温度探头测量，其加热精准且相对均匀。App 为基础食材提供了预设食谱，并带有蒸汽循环功能，防止食物变干。只要记得使用中间的烤架，这台烤箱还能烤出非常棒的吐司。（如果使用底层烤架，面包会被烤焦。）
Family Style Prep 家庭式准备
I mostly enjoyed the single-serve meals I tried last year from Tovala. I cheerily praised in particular a red-wine braised filet mignon and a “tandoori-spiced” chicken and chickpea salad that arrived with a drizzle of mint chutney. An almond-dusted meat and quinoa bowl was drizzled pleasantly with cilantro chimichurri. 我去年尝试的 Tovala 单人餐总体上让我很满意。我特别称赞了红酒炖菲力牛排和“坦都里风味”鸡肉鹰嘴豆沙拉，后者配有薄荷酸辣酱。还有一份撒了杏仁碎的肉类藜麦碗，淋上香菜青酱，味道非常不错。
But until somewhat recently, Tovala’s meals were a single-serve affair, ruling out families or maybe even couples who like to eat together. And so its audience was much more limited. Newer family-style meals change this math considerably. 但直到最近，Tovala 的餐点还仅限于单人份，这把家庭用户甚至喜欢一起用餐的情侣排除在外，因此其受众群体非常有限。而新的家庭式餐点大大改变了这一局面。