I ate a sushirrito with Square's food delivery app, and it was amazing
It's basically a hybrid between a sushi roll and burrito.
A restaurant based in San Francisco called Sushirrito has been making these wild concoctions since 2011, and people there absolutely love them. But the sushirrito craze has yet to come to New York City - until this week.
Square, the mobile payments company, also happened to launch its speedy food delivery service called Fastbite in New York on Wednesday. They were offering the sushirrito, so I had to get one.
It was an amazing experience.
You can order lunch meals under $15 in Manhattan through the new Fastbite menu in Square's Caviar app.
Caviar has been available in New York since 2013, and it partners with over 100 local restaurants for lunch and dinner deliveries. Square bought Caviar in the summer of 2014, and has since rolled out an iPhone and Android app.
Fastbite is a separate delivery service that Square bought a couple of months ago and just integrated with Caviar. While you can order from pricier restaurants in Caviar and even order meals a week in advance, the Fastbite menu is focused on speedy delivery for more affordable meals.
Fastbite has been doing deliveries for lunch and dinner through Caviar in San Francisco for the past couple of months.
Right now, Caviar is only delivering lunch with Fastbite between Grand Street and 42nd Street in Manhattan from noon to 2 p.m. But Square tells Business Insider it has plans to expand the service to more parts of the city and even Brooklyn.
The new Fastbite menu is where I found the sushirrito I was seeking.
The lunch menu changes each day, but Fastbite was offering a sushirrito from Uma Temakeria on Wednesday. Chef Chris Jaeckle's Uma Temakeria is the first restaurants in New York to offer a sushirrito, and the delicious food item is only available at the Chelsea and Penn Plates pop-up locations.
Thanks to Fastbite I got to eat one a whole day early! Other menu items included a fennel salad and cavatelli pasta from Frank ies Spuntino 570, but I was all about the sushirrito.
I quickly placed my order, and the app told me my food would arrive in 10-15 minutes.
Little did I know that it was going to take way less time than that.
I immediately got a text with a link to follow along with my delivery.
Then something amazing happened: my food arrived in under two minutes!
I was shocked when I got a call less than a minute later from my sushirrito bearer. He said he was in the lobby with my food.
I run downstairs with my colleague Tim Stenovec, who also ordered a sushirrito, and a nice deliverer is there to greet us. He has an insulated carrying case for keeping the food fresh, and even though there's no way to add a tip in the Caviar app, we made sure to give him a few extra bucks.
Several other BI staffers ordered the same thing for lunch that day and had similar experiences with how fast the food arrived. It was kind of scary how fast it took.
Each meal comes in a little Caviar slip.
The reason for such speedy delivery is that Caviar's couriers are combing the area on foot with prepared food. That raises obvious concerns about freshness, but I didn't have any problems.
I ordered an Italian sandwich through the service again on Thursday, and it was delivered in under one minute. Two other BI staffers had food that took 18 minutes to arrive today, but because the delivery took three minutes over the guaranteed time, they both got an apologetic phone call and a $10 credit towards another meal.
Now back to the sushirrito. It was amazing.
It came with salmon, tuna, spicy tobanjan mayo, cucumbers, carrots, sesame seeds, and seasoned sushi rice wrapped in a burrito sheet of nori. Divine.
I seriously couldn't get over how good it was.
The fish tasted fresh and delicious, and the spicy mayo really glued the flavors together.
I ate it all in about five minutes.
Tim Stenovec, who sits at the desk next to mine, loved his as well.
Food delivery apps like Caviar are only getting more popular, and after trying Uber's food service the other day, I was more impressed with the overall experience of using Caviar. It has a great design and customer service, and the food itself was delicious.
If you're interested in trying out Caviar and its new Fastbite menu for yourself, the service is available in the App Store, on Android, and the web. While the Fastbite lunch delivery is only in San Francisco and New York, the Caviar app already does delivery in several U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Seattle, and Washington D.C.