Where the heart and best cooks are

Gone are the days when the only solution if you wanted anything like a replacement for your mother's irreplaceable cooking was a top-class restaurant. These days, thanks to technology, the finest home-cooked meal can be placed on your table, and if you are a half-decent cook you can place the same on someone else's table.

In China, this is being made possible by mobile apps including Mama Weidao (which means mom flavors), Cengfan (cadge a meal) and Home Cooked, whose Chinese name is Huijia Chifan (go and eat at home).

Many of the apps allow people to sell their home-cooked dishes to others, and usually the app proprietors handle the delivery and logistics.

The proprietors of Mama Weidao and Cengfan say 10 million yuan ($1.57 million) has been invested in each of them, and Home Cooked, the most widely recognized one, has $10 million invested in it, Chinese media reports say. Home Cooked is now said to have 4,000 kitchens at its service.

On Home Cooked, each kitchen has an introduction page, including the owners' photos and descriptions of food offered and cooking methods.

Customers can browse the home kitchen listings rated by distance from the customer's choice of location and then click on a kitchen for details. The customer can either pick up the meals, have them delivered at extra cost or in some cases eat them at the home of the cook.

Wu Qiong, 28, who works for an international company in Beijing, says that these days she often orders meals from Home Cooked, especially during workdays.

"I've had enough of restaurants near work, and meals from Home Cooked are different."

It is too much hassle to cook at home and take food to work with her, she says, and the mildly flavored and healthy meals she has had from Home Cooked contrast sharply with the greasy fare loaded with sugar and flavoring agents in restaurants.

In addition, because the quantity of dishes that cook-at-home chefs prepare is limited, she believes the ingredients they use are similar to those that would be used in normal family cooking.

"After all, no one uses digouyou (gutter oil) to cook their own meal."

Li Sha, 27, of Beijing, who comes from Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, says the home kitchen apps offer her a wide variety of choice, and she has even found food typical of her hometown through one.

Since moving to Beijing 10 years ago to attend university, she had been unable to find authentic rice noodles common in her hometown, even though there are a few Shaanxi-style restaurants in the capital, she says.

She recently struck gold on Home Cooked, discovering an amateur from Hanzhong, and now she is a regular customer.

"It is great to eat authentic hometown food and to be able to talk in my own dialect."

A lot of what is being offered on Home Cooked seems to be reasonably priced, presumably because chefs are not burdened with heavy outlays, such as for rent, she says.

The kitchen owner is a full-time housewife who says she sells her dishes not only to make money, but also to get a feeling of being appreciated by people beyond her family.

Qiao Biyun, 56, a Beijing retiree, says she signed up with Home Cooked in April after seeing a promotional leaflet. Before that, she says, she killed time by attending classes on cooking.

Home Cooked has given her group training with other home chefs, and helped her set up her online kitchen, she says, and she is now one of the platform's most sought-after chefs.

For her a typical day starts about 7 am, when she gets up to buy vegetables, meat and sometimes seafood. Then, as orders flood in, she cooks. She cooks lunches only and takes up to 15 orders a day, she says.

"I would be lying if I said I don't care about making money. Of course I do, but for me the main thing is having something to do. I don't want to get tired, but I don't want to be useless to others, either."

Most of the Home Cooked chefs she has got to know are, like her, retirees, she says, and the rest are full-time homemakers or people who want to work part time.

Zhou Tong, operations director of Home Cooked, says home kitchen platforms are yet another example of the sharing economy and of how to use resources that once went to waste.

Home Cooked has regulations and safeguards on food safety, and will not tolerate anyone who seriously breaches them, he says.

liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/16/2015 page25)