Think of Tovala as a Meal Kit That Comes With a Robot Chef

This is perhaps a smart play. These pre-programmed, mostly pre-prepped meals are a unique feature for the Tovala—something not found elsewhere on the market. You sign up for a certain number of meals a week, anywhere from four to 16 total meals, which will arrive packed into a weekly cool-packed box. The menu for each week offers a choice of 35 or more options a week, with few vegetarian options but a fair number of “gluten-friendly” and high-protein meals.

But you also must choose an oven, which in my case arrived four days before the meals. The oven doesn’t come with an obligation to keep it—you can return within 100 days, if it doesn’t agree with you—but to get the steep discount, you’ll have to stick with six weeks of meal plan. Otherwise, you either pay full price or return the oven.

The sell on the Tovala meals is ease, without compromising texture. They’re easy enough to prep that I wouldn’t really consider it cooking. It’s mostly a matter of arranging a few ingredients between two aluminum trays. I sliced a few peppers for a cilantro chimichurri bowl, but otherwise, the only knife I used across six meals was the one I used to cut my filet mignon after it was cooked.

The oven boasts a little QR- and barcode scanner like the ones at the supermarket. Use it to scan the recipe card, and the oven pretty much does the rest, often cycling through the same little trio of functions: steam, convection bake, then a little broil to brown the top. It’s a simple trick, but it’s a good one. Most meals take less than 2 minutes to prep, and less than 20 to cook.

I wouldn’t call the meals overly complex or layered, but they were surprisingly worldly and varied, ranging from a sweet chili-glazed salmon with pickled veg and noodles, to a credible red-sauce Italian chicken parm. A globe-compressing “spanikopita quesadilla” folded spinach, tzatziki, and feta into a tortilla: This last was both tasty and a little dinky, and I’d have appreciated a small side.