What Beats Uber Eats

Two apps test the appetite for home-cooked meals, delivered

- By Matthew Kronsberg

To eat in New York is to be spoiled with choice. Why settle for mere Chinese food when you can select from restaurants that specialize in Hunan, Henan, or Yunnan dishes? But there are limits: Some cuisines are too niche to sustain a commercial operation; others shine best when made on a small scale.

So it was something of a delicious surprise that I found myself ordering food from Guam, which I'd never seen in a New York restaurant. I was particularly taken with chicken kelaguen, often called the territory's national dish. Think of it as a stepped-up, tropically tinged chicken salad. Every Guamanian has their own version, and this one got its depth and bite from a splash of fish sauce and finely minced bits of celery, onion, and Thai chiles. I spooned it onto the included wedges of green onion-flecked paratha, a flatbread, and dabbed it with dill aioli. It was made for me in the Queens neighborhood of Rego Park in the kitchen of Tina Gu, a Shanghai-born cook who studied hospitality in Switzerland and served with her husband in the US Army National Guard in Guam.