Home cooks can now purchase the same steaks and seafood sold at restaurants such as Mastro's, Del Frisco's, and Joe's Crab Shack. Landry's Kitchen provides customers with access to an array of ingredients from the Houston-based hospitality empire, ranging from hamburger patties to decadent seafood feasts.
The company, owned by Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta, recognizes that not everyone feels comfortable dining at restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, it created this service to ship that ships individually wrapped or packaged ingredients in insulated coolers loaded with dry ice. The kits include seasoning, and online videos provide instructions for those who may want to be cautious about how they prepare a $250 case of snow crab clusters.
“Our team has spent countless hours sourcing the world’s finest ingredients from our more than 600 restaurants worldwide,” Landry's senior vice president of culinary Kathy Ruiz said in a statement. “With the need for convenient, at-home solutions at an all-time high, we are thrilled to deliver best-in-class seafood and steak offerings straight from our Landry’s Kitchen to your home.”
But does ordering from Landry's Kitchen give customers the value of its Billion Dollar Buyer chairman? The results are mixed, at least from a review of the offerings on the website.
For example, the company offers an eight 15-ounce Certified Angus Beef ribeyes for $249.99; Houston steakhouse Taste of Texas sells an 8-pack of 16-ounce Certified Angus Beef ribeyes for $219.95. H-E-B sells USDA Prime ribeyes for $13.38 per pound, which means that eight would cost $107.04.
Similarly, Landry's offers a $69 "two nights of seafood for two" package that includes two, 7-ounce portions of Chilean sea bass and two, 8.5-ounce portions of Ora King salmon from New Zealand. At Central Market, Chilean sea bass costs $29.99 per pound and Ora King salmon is $26.99 per pound, which represents a $12 saving on ingredients without factoring in the cost of shipping from Landry's versus the time required to drive to the grocery store's Houston location in River Oaks.
Other packages are harder to replicate and might be worth the splurge. Trying to assemble either the $140 "lobster indulgence" package that includes three varieties of lobster tails (North American, Caribbean, and Australian) or the $400 "21 day seafood habit" extravaganza would probably require sourcing from a specialty purveyor.
Steak lover's package.
