Tempo Prepared Meal Subscription Review (2026): Surprisingly Tasty

Perhaps I am easily impressed. But I tend to think of the modern prepared delivery meal service as a marvel of technology.

Tempo, the spin-off prepared-meal subscription service from Home Chef meal kits, specializes in meals that look like TV dinners but have never been frozen. The boxed beef barbacoa and salmon au poivre and chicken pesto meals that arrived in my refrigerator this March had instead been cooked in a commissary kitchen days before, then boxed up and mailed in a package kept cool with (mostly) recyclable cold packs.

Even after arriving, each meal remained not just safe to eat but actually flavorful for a week or more. That beef barbacoa, when I heated it in a Ninja Crispi air fryer (my current preferred option for leftovers cooking), was not just still moist but actually tender, served alongside jasmine rice dotted with corn and sauced with a light poblano cream sauce. It was probably even better than the barbacoa I could get from the (mediocre, I'll grant) food cart down the street.