Chef Abdelaziz Labib's Meal Prep Service Is Nutritious & Convenient

The food delivery loophole we fall into after long days is familiar: we’re spread-eagled on our bed, with at least two food delivery apps open on our phone and about five minutes to decide what we’re going to eat. The choice we make has to be the one that consumes the least amount of time possible, be available at the time we’re ordering (not eternally busy), and still somehow taste so phenomenal it makes all the woes of the day worth it. Naturally, this perfect choice is difficult to strike.

Abdelaziz Labib, a Cairo-based chef, often faces this dilemma himself, despite his occupation. He found himself arriving home so worn out by the work of catering extravagant private events that he finds himself on those very same food delivery apps at 12 AM.Labib described his all-too-familiar struggles in a series of short videos on social media, under ‘untitled, unrefined’. The untitled project he refers to is a chef-crafted meal service designed to provide busy people with hassle-free delicious, nutritious food. “I began working on this service about a year ago,” Labib tells SceneEats. “But I often found myself caught in a loop of perfectionism and worrying about it being flawless before even starting. That’s why the service remains untitled - as a deliberate act of going against that grain.”Labib describes the service as less catering, more private chef experience without the actual (psychological and financial) hassle of having a private chef. It’s essentially a subscription, either five, six or seven meals a week, where you choose the dishes you prefer from a prepared weekly menu, which includes items like orzo risotto with beef and caramelised onion, smoked tahini fish, and mushroom and onion gnocchi. The dishes then come ready to heat and eat, and you can either place them on a plate for a more appetising presentation, or inhale them from the plastic container they come in.

“Perhaps I won’t create art that shifts culture, build businesses that push humanity forward, or raise children who will carry the future. But I can serve the people who do.” Regardless of how many kilograms of onions Labib has to julienne in one sitting (one time, he had to do 200 kilograms), the chef is motivated by the need to provide regular people who don’t have a 24/7 team of private chefs waiting on their every need with actually fulfilling food, so that they can live fulfilling lives.