Kitchen Table Passport Subscription Box Review – Australia + $15 Coupon Code!

The latest Kitchen Table Passport sent us on a voyage Down Under!  Kitchen Table Passport is a meal-centered cooking and exploration kit.  Each kit features a traditional dish from the featured region, providing a recipe, spices, and pairing suggestions.  You can subscribe to the “Full Experience” with cultural information and mementos along with the monthly dish, or a combination of the three, or just the spices and recipe. With the Full Experience,  the dish is the centerpiece of the evening, but you also receive “discovery items,” a couple mementos emblematic of the featured culture, as well as a stack of well-photographed cards replete with trivia and information.

The handy checklist helps you inventory your items and get ready for a big evening.

The welcome card introduces you to the featured culture and provides some suggestions for serving your dish in an authentic way.  The Aussie box outlined the essential characteristics of a meat pie (think German Purity Law, but with a “meat flesh content” proviso), as well as the meat pies centrality to sport and culture.  Ketchup is not frowned upon, but is a necessary accompaniment.

The contents of the kit.  At bottom left and center are the mementos, tiny items suitable for passing around the table.  At bottom right is the stack of Discovery Cards.  Top center and left are the shopping list and spice packet for the featured dish.

Discover

The front of the 10 Discovery Cards features high-quality photos showing some Australian cultural touchstones.

The back of each card is loaded with trivia across several categories of interest (food, industry, sport, culture, etc) and several more photos relevant to the topics.

Front of a card.  Each card is approximately 8″ X 5″ and printed on glossy cardstock.  The photos are amazingly clear and really beautiful.

The back of a card.  More great photos and facts.  The cards are meant to encourage table-side conversation.  

A couple of the distinctly Australian subjects captured on the cards.  The Discovery cards try to incorporate elements from across the full breadth of the country’s cultural and natural heritage.

Mementos

The mementos are tiny items that can be passed around the table and make wonderful keepsakes afterwards.  Australian mementos were a postcard and sticker featuring the Tasmanian Aussie rules football squad, the Hawks, an opal, and some Vegemite.

The significance of the mementos is explained, so your guests won’t be puzzled when you pass around the Vegemite.

Taste

Everything in the meal kit. The spices are pre-mixed and measured.  The shopping list comprises easily found items.  We had a transcription problem and picked up phyllo dough instead of puff pastry.  It worked great, and it met the meat rule of a “flaky crust”.

The recipe is simple and clear.  Because we used Phyllo dough (I put five layers together with a mop of butter between each, following the recipe from there), the pies were rectangular.

We served up our pies with mashed peas, as suggested by the cards, and some mashed potato.

Everyone enjoyed trying the food.  Even our youngest ate some of the meat from the pies, as they were savory, not spicy.

Our 4 1/2 year old loved the pies, though he preferred using a fork and forewent the traditional ketchup accompaniment, opting for “sweet sauce” (Thai sweet chili sauce) instead.

We really enjoyed our cultural dinner.  The recipes so far have been relatively kid friendly, so the meals have been truly family meals.  The cultural aspect of the box is pretty versatile — it can be a suitable lesson piece for younger family members, or it makes suitable fodder for conversation over cocktails (or a Fosters).

At $24.95 a month, this is not inexpensive compared to other spice subscriptions, but there are multiple other options available depending on your preferences: Taste Only (Spices & Recipe) – $9.95, a combination of two of the Taste + Discover + Mementos experiences – $19.95 (you choose which two).  You can also subscribe for 6 or 12 months to the full experience and knock the price down further by $5+ per month.  It did come with mementos and a stack of interesting cards — there is more to the full experience box than just the meal.  I like the concept of a culturally immersive dinner, and the meal and informational items in the box were well-thought out and enjoyable.  We had a great time and a really great Kitchen Table Passport night!

Visit Kitchen Table Passport to subscribe or find out more! Use coupon code FIRSTBOX to get your first box for just $10! Exp 9/20.