Rice Meal Express | Plant-Based Arroz à la Cubana

In just a few short weeks 7-Eleven rolled their take on the Arroz à la Cubana, and it is part of the range of plant-based meals in collaboration with Un-Meat. It is no surprise to see that a convenience store like 7-Eleven would produce their interpretation of this rice meal that would be their latest product that started appearing over the weekend. Coincidence? Or it just so happens that Shopwise Supermarket just happened to have a similar product, and 7-Eleven happened to come up with their take on the same dish that is more affordable than the regular Arroz à la Cubana, but with a twist in making it plant-based along with their take on the Meatballs becomes a curious proposition.

The Rice Express Meal is a new range of plant-based meals that came out of nowhere when 7-Eleven launched the product in less than a week. Interestingly, there has been no other convenience store that ever had any of these dishes, and the only store that comes to mind is Shopwise Supermarket, which carries the Arroz à la Cubana and Meatballs with Sweet and Sour Sauce.

This is deliberately strategic marketing to keep customers and make them aware that they made “their version” of these dishes. To keep up with the times and have a healthier dish for the consumers they made these dishes plant-based by teaming up with Un-Meat, the same company that they have collaborated with in the past to produce the plant-based hamburger and burger steak rice meal.

Budget Friendly Arroz à la Cubana

The tub that comes with both Rice Meal Express is white, which is a little bit wider than the container that has their Cheezy Bake Mac snack. It is of course a smaller product compared to the one produced by Shopwise Supermarket in keeping with the “budget-friendly” pricing of this meal.

It is only covered with a vacuum plastic wrap and you can see the dish with rice, and there is some optimistic hope that this would be good the first time you laid eyes on the food section for someone looking forward to a great meal with a 7-Eleven product that was recently launched in the past 7 days.

The Constraints of Quality

Not all things are what you hope to be when having a budget product. The Arroz à la Cubana when you unwrapped it before putting it in the microwave was a little bit underwhelming when you saw the portions of the viand like it did not match with the size of the tub where it is rested.

Surprisingly, did the Cubana have cheese or was it egg? The yellow round piece there doesn’t look like a sliced banana, which is very much stripped to thin slices that you can’t even get to hold it when you slowly consume the rice meal. There’s not much of the Cubana in there to even match the amount of rice that came with it.

Overall, the product speaks for itself that it is a “budget-friendly” meal that would be good enough for an afternoon snack than it would be considered as lunch. It is underwhelming to even have it without not consuming the rice when you run out of Cubana and most people would clamour for more Vegan-type rice meals, which would have been just a gimmick if they only produced two dishes in this product.

7-Eleven needs to get its head out of the clouds and think that not every meal can be “budget-friendly” to cut corners and at the same time make it sound like it is healthier than what its competitor had put out. It is a “Cheap meal” that is not enough for lunch and probably good for those who don’t eat that much.

• Food Quality: 3.5 out of 5
• Affordability: C+
• Overall: The portions are too small, and the product appears to be a gimmick rather than something interesting.

Plant-Based Arroz à la Cubana | Retailed at: ₱ 80.00 Pesos [$ 2.19 AUD | $ 1.44 USD]**

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