By Jon Bodell - Mar 7, 2017 | 1 comment

Hot Soppressata and Arugula Pizza from the Local Baskit store.

When you walk into the new Local Baskit storefront on Ferry Street, you'll see a long table lined with that night's Cook Tonight Meals. On this particular day there were four options, but you never know how many there might be (unless you've gone online beforehand, in which case you'll know exactly what the options are).(JON BODELL / Insider staff)

When you walk into the new Local Baskit storefront on Ferry Street, you'll see a long table lined with that night's Cook Tonight Meals. On this particular day there were four options, but you never know how many there might be (unless you've gone online beforehand, in which case you'll know exactly what the options are).(JON BODELL / Insider staff)

If you’re into healthy, wholesome, local and delicious home-cooked meals, you really ought to check out the new Local Baskit marketplace on Ferry Street.

You may already be familiar with the name Local Baskit – the meal kit company launched as an online-only outlet about eight months ago – but now there’s a physical store that you can stop into any time you’re looking for a nice dinner on your way home. (Monitor reporter Nick Reid wrote a more comprehensive story about the business in the Feb. 27 edition.)

Since the doors are now open, we decided to stop by last week and check the place out.

The meal kit service is a sign-up kind of deal – you can subscribe to receive meals regularly, similar to the way a CSA works. Up until now, subscribers received their packages in the mail. With the Concord storefront, it allows customers to stop by in person to pick up their food – and a chance to browse the snacks and craft brew options, too.

But it’s not exclusive to subscribers – anybody can walk in off the street any day and buy any of the snacks or choose from a few “Cook Tonight” meal options.

Cook Tonight is what owner Beth Richards calls these meal kits meant for walk-ins. Since we weren’t subscribers, the Cook Tonight table is where we headed.

There were four options available for us last Wednesday – Green Onion Honey Chicken, Hot Soppressata and Arugula Pizza, Spinach Ravioli with Lemon Pistachio Cream Sauce, and Veggies and Lentils in Peanut Sauce – though the individual options and even the number of options will change all the time depending on what’s available and what ideas have most recently popped into Richards’s head, she said.

All of the options sounded pretty good, but being the sucker for dehydrated meat that I am, I went with the Hot Soppressata and Arugula Pizza.

The kit came with everything – crust from Rustic Crust, sauce (from Hunt’s), a healthy log of Soppressata, cheese, garlic cloves and arugula. As well as the ingredients, each kit also comes with a handy set of instructions, complete with color photos so you can see what it’s supposed to look like through each phase of the process.

Since this was a pizza, there wasn’t a lot of prep work involved. The only thing that took any time was making thin slices out of the thick stick of Soppressata, which is like a coarser, fancier version of pepperoni. Other than that, it was basically applying the ingredients to the crust, then throwing it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.

When it was done, I was impressed with how good it looked and smelled. Maybe it wasn’t quite as perfect as the one in the picture, but it was still pretty good for my standards.

The taste was excellent – a nice, fresh, savory flavor in every bite – as was the overall experience.

If you’re out in Concord and you’re looking for a good, healthy meal, stop by Local Baskit at 10 Ferry St. and have a look. The store is open Tuesday through Friday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more info or to sign up, go to shop.localbaskit.com or click the Concord Marketplace tab at the top of localbaskit.com.