By Andrew Berlanstein
In a college town like Boston, delivery food can be found on the Net.
With a click of a computer mouse, you can have anything from Chicken Tikka Masala from India Samraat to Cake Batter Ice Cream from Cold Stone delivered to your doorstep.
NightOwl Deliveries, founded by class of 2001 alumnus Felix Bendersky, is one of a few different online food-delivery options in the area. Since its inception in 2004, it has become one of the most well-known online services. NightOwl allows customers to browse more than 70 participating restaurants and place their order through the company’s website in a matter of minutes.
Both the restaurant and the company make a profit by marking up menu prices and tacking on a $5.00 delivery fee. The concept is innovative: Hire a service to order take-out from restaurants that don’t commonly deliver, like The Cheesecake Factory or Vinny T’s. Although this idea is intriguing, NightOwl has hardly perfected their methods.
Problems start with the NightOwl website, nightowldeliveries.com. Besides the confusing layout, it’s not uncommon for orders to “get lost” between the website’s confirmation page and NightOwl’s receiving computer. During one such instance with an order from Eagle’s Deli in Brighton, the system managed to send an e-mail confirmation for the order. An Eagle Deli worker claims she never received it to begin with. A call to NightOwl revealed that the order was never placed.
The disappointed diner is left to assume that the problem is due to NightOwl’s electronic over-expansion. Customers can now place orders not only through the NightOwl website, but also through AOL Instant Messenger and websites like Foodler.com and Campusfood.com that simply forward their orders to NightOwl, adding an extra layer of unreliability.
Even when orders go through properly, minimum wait time is always an hour, testing the patience of hungry customers. All problems aside, there is one decent aspect to NightOwl service: It accepts Husky Dollars. But any benefit from this is negated, as a call for catering, paid for by Husky Dollars, yielded cold food.
Of course, there are reliable ways to skip the foray into cyberspace, forgoing the fear of a lost order.
When it comes to ordering using the traditional telephone method, Crazy Dough’s Pizza Company at 1124 Boylston St. trumps all the competition. Offering 16 specialty pizzas, Crazy Dough’s tosses up the freshest and most unique pies around. Favorites like the Nutty Tuscan pizza, with toasted pine nuts, crumbled gorgonzola and caramelized onion are delivered every day until 10 p.m. Crazy Dough’s standard cheese pizza is most noteworthy though, with a daily-made crust that would impress even the most experienced pizza aficionado. Delivery is usually quick-about half an hour in the Northeastern area.
For the fastest and most reliable Chinese delivery, Sunrise Chinese Food at 1031 Tremont St. is the clear winner. To the naked eye, Sunrise is little more than a door and a Plexiglas window, but behind the scenes, the family-owned business is delivering some of the area’s tastiest Chinese food-usually in less than 20 minutes. Devout fans from all around the Northeastern community turn to Sunrise for classics like General Gau’s Chicken and Crab Rangoons, especially late at night since Sunrise remains open and delivers until 2 a.m.
The ability to have food delivered is definitely a luxury. Sure, it’s lazy and a little pathetic, but we’re college students, and if we’re not allowed to be lazy and pathetic, who is? Let’s try new things and take advantage of all this high-speed city has to offer.
Nonetheless, NightOwl’s flaws leave it looking like limp lettuce.
