These days, there are many ways to get prepared food delivered right to your door, be it from restaurants or meal kit services.

Bay Area-based Locale offers yet another option, one with some interesting advantages.

It was co-founded in 2020 by Chris Clark, who worked for a time in investment banking and venture capital. Like so many of us, he struggled to maintain a healthful diet while working long hours. So, he came up with Locale, a prepared meal service with dishes that are high in protein, fiber, and organic produce, and contain no processed ingredients.

Each meal is packed not in a plastic takeout container, but in a large reusable glass jar. The food needs only be reheated in the microwave or on the stovetop to enjoy. The jars can be left for pickup with your next order or simply reused or recycled on your own.

Locale makes deliveries each Monday to as far north as Marin, as east as Sacramento and as south as Carmel. The meals arrive in insulated totes, and are designed to be consumed within that week.

I was invited as a guest to try out the delivery service. Once on its website, you choose whether you want 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12 dishes per week. You can skip weeks or even cancel your subscription at any time.

Each meal is $15.50. There is a $10 delivery fee per order, and a $6 glass jar deposit.

I opted for six meals, choosing from the more than 20 different ones available each week. You can opt for lower calorie (560 or less), higher calorie (more than 700) or no preference, and low carb or standard, as well as add in dietary restrictions.

Each jar lid is affixed with a label printed with heating instructions, as well as nutritional information. At times, a sauce that shouldn’t be heated but used as a garnish will come in a separate plastic container inside the glass jar. For example, the Grass-fed Steak and Parsnip Puree (819 calories, 44 grams protein, 55 grams carbs, 47 grams fat, 10 grams fiber), had a chimichurri sauce packaged that way.

The beef heated up tender and moist, and went well with the herbaceous green sauce. I loved the nutty taste of the parsnip mash. And there were plenty of yellow and orange carrots to bulk up the dish. In fact, the portion sizes are sizeable for the price.

The Miso Wild Salmon Bowl had big cubes of poached salmon, a heap of shredded daikon, chunks of fresh cucumber, edamame, and a dab of mashed avocado. A miso-sesame oil dressing can be poured over the fish. It all makes for a healthy tasting bowl at 776 calories with 42 grams protein, 71 grams carbs, 36 grams fat, and 8 grams of fiber. It’s the kind of dish that you feel virtuous eating after a good workout.

For those who like punchy flavors with a hit of heat, the Shrimp Puttanesca will hit the spot. It was one of my favorites. Complete with seven large, wild-caught shrimp and whole-wheat bucatini, it’s a saucy pasta dish with blistered pear tomatoes, green and kalamata olives, and capers. A nice touch is the small container of finely diced preserved lemon to sprinkle on after heating. This is a spicy, briny, peppery tasting dish. And at 702 calories, 43 grams protein, 83 grams carbs, 22 grams fat, and 9 grams fiber, it proves that pasta needn’t be a gut-busting dish nor eaten only on rare occasions.

The Pastured Chicken Shawarma comes complete with turmeric-scented rice and nutty tasting, cumin-spiced chickpeas. Again, there’s a surprising amount of chicken. After heating, enjoy the dish with the accompanying creamy tzatziki and crunchy gherkin pickles that made a fair stand-in for the more traditional pickled carrots, cucumber, radishes or beets. This dish is 738 calories, with 46 grams protein, 80 grams carbs, 26 grams fat, and 8 grams fiber.

The Pastured Chicken and Green Tea Piccata came complete with chewy barley risotto made with bone broth, and plenty of roasted carrots. I can’t say that I necessarily tasted the green tea. It did have a lemony taste, though my husband wished there was a bigger citrus presence. I know this is sacrilege, but I almost wished for a little more fat in this dish. The sauce for classic chicken or veal piccata is made in the pan that the proteins were cooked in, then deglazed with lemon juice and stock, with butter whisked in at the end to create a thin yet rich tasting sauce that coats everything beautifully. This green tea sauce was much thicker and didn’t blanket the chicken in quite the same way. However, the trade-off for adding butter would be calories and fat, because as is, this dish weighs in at a respectable 702 calories with 44 grams protein, 73 grams carbs, 26 grams fat, and 9 grams fiber.

The Old-Fashioned Pastured Turkey Meatloaf get points for its house-made ketchup that’s sweet, tangy, and perky tasting. The meatloaf is moist and herbally, and is accompanied by celeriac and parsnip puree, and glazed carrots.

Carrots are a mainstay in a lot of these meals, so you better be a fan. While some leaves of spinach and kale accompanied a few of the dishes I tried, I almost wish there had been more broccoli or broccolini or maybe chard, brussels sprouts or green beans instead of so many carrots to offer more variety to the palate.

The jars are an admirable vehicle for the food. However, if you care about presentation, it will mean that you will have to carefully extract each layer of food with a fork or spoon to try to plate it all pleasingly. If you don’t give two shakes about that, you can simply dump everything onto a serving plate to microwave.

Locale also gets points for using top-notch ingredients in thoughtfully composed dishes. In fact, even if you might not use a service like this regularly, I can see arranging a delivery for a friend or family member who might be ailing or home-bound or who just needs a break with a good-for-you and good tasting meal.