Betelnut Boise is not a local owner restaurant or even a chain restaurant with storefront. It is a chain concept using Crave! Delivery (ordered via Crave!'s app) ghost kitchen for food prep and, like the roughly 12 other chains having food made in Crave!'s ghost kitchens, can either be picked up by driving to the big facility or, and this is Crave!'s ace-in-the-hole, delivered by Crave!'s own team of drivers using Crave! vehicles. In a current promo piece the Betelnut owners (currently include Scott Crawford, I think, who heads another chain enterprise being prepped and distributed via Crave! ghost) say they chose Crave! as partner because of the delivery done directly by them. Perhaps they should have paid more attention to whether the people in Crave!'s ghost kitchens under the big facility roof can actually cook good dishes from Betelnut's cook-kits. Because as a three time customer of Crave! I can say two of those three times included food that was inedible to the point of being tossed out. And some of their creation of Betelnut dishes was really disappointing.
Delivery = A-. Would be A but on one of those three times the delivery was overlooked and arrived 45 minutes late. Still everyone gets a dropped ball chance and the other two times all A for Delivery for the friendly drivers. Packaging is great too so thumbs up there. See photo:
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/crave-delivery-meridian-2?select=v_8vZalNQ9JrTsxK-1WRgg
Food = C-.
IF Betelnut really chose Crave! for the delivery component then I'll share with them as a consumer that there is not much value in good delivery of poor quality food.
Which might not be as damned frustrating for folks who don't know the back story for Betelnut. It was not, as I think some of the promo material says, created by the incomparable Madame Cecelia Chiang, who died this year (2020) at 100 years of age and who in her young years introduce Mandarin food in the US when she opened a restaurant in SF. She introduced a lot of influential American Chef's, like Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower (I worked in SF in his day at STARS) and James Beard to the nuances of Chinese regional cuisine.
Also the guy who would go on to open Betelnut in SF was inspired by her dishes and it its' day when Chef Alex Ong was in the kitchen Betelnut was delightful. He left, it went down hill and closed in about 2015 after being panned by critics and waning popularity with diners. Now resurrected in the form of Betelnut chain made in ghost kitchen for delivery, some of the menu item names from the old Betelnut are in place. But the quality of food definitely is not.
Not that all has been terrible but some are not good and consistency of food of all kinds out of Crave! kitchen has been a failure across the lines ordered so far.
Of all of them, the one I most hoped would work would be Betelnut. A loved one resurrected. Alas, not so much. read more