Rastelli’s Review 2023: Premium Meat and Seafood Delivery

Overview

It's no secret that a meal is only as good as the ingredients used to create it, which is why discerning home chefs prioritize the caliber of their meats and seafood and turn to a company like Rastelli's.

Rastelli's is a family-owned business with almost 5 decades of experience that has become a go-to source for many households seeking premium, ethically-sourced meat, and fish. Responsibility, Partnership, Trust, and Quality are the core values of Rastelli's and of its owners – brothers Ray and Tony Rastelli.

Whether ordering proteins or stocking up for your next backyard BBQ, you can't go wrong with Rastelli's high-quality products. You can even check out what farms Rastelli's partners with to determine whether its animal welfare standards are up to par. You can order one-time or subscribe for deliveries every 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 weeks.

This review delves into the nuances of Rastelli's meat and seafood delivery service to help you decide if it's the right cut for your culinary creativity.

What’s on the Rastelli’s Menu

Rastelli’s menu is packed with high-quality proteins and sides and is best for omnivores. You should consider it a premium butcher shop from which you can purchase meats and seafood to fill your fridge for the week, month, or for a special occasion.

Meal Options

You’ll find 6 categories of proteins: beef, seafood, poultry, pork, specialty meats, and Primals. Each category includes cuts of meat from different animals and fish, and each cut includes various grades, portion sizes, and amounts you can order at a time. This means you have tons of options to choose the perfect meats for your needs.

Some meats and fish are available seasonally due to harvesting restrictions but also to ensure they mature naturally and to the highest quality. So availability can be limited for certain specialty meats and fish. Otherwise, you’ll always see an excellent selection of beef, poultry, seafood, and pork year round. Rastelli’s always covers the protein basics and some.

You can also browse by “collections” such as roasts, sausages, and burgers to find partially prepped and seasoned meat and fish.

Rastelli’s is truly a boutique butcher service, and I’m thoroughly impressed with its quality. You’ll find nothing less than the best grades and cuts of meat and fish on its menu. What a resource for people who want the highest quality cuts of proteins from farms with expert animal welfare and environmental standards.

You won’t find prepared meals, but you’ll find meats, fish, sides, and desserts. All products are oven-ready unless you’d like to flex your chef skills and add your own marinade and seasoning.

You can order from 1 item to unlimited amounts of each product unless otherwise specified. You’ll even find several bundle options available. All you need to know is how many people you hope to feed and over what period of time.

Rastelli’s only sources meat and fish from the best family farms from all over the world that use zero hormones, steroids, and antibiotics and raise animals in habitats as close to their natural ones as possible. All seafood is wild-caught or sustainably raised in free-flowing water fisheries to ensure animals and their natural habitats are treated with the highest welfare standards.

You’ll also find organic, pastured, antibiotic-free, and hormone-free poultry. Chicken and turkey are pasture-raised, fed an all-vegetarian diet, and live on farms that pass the Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC) standards for humane welfare and environmental treatment.

However, I don’t think their duck treatment is the same as it is for chicken, turkey, and beef. If you only want to order poultry raised on farms with the highest animal welfare standards, I’m not sure you’d want to order the duck. Ducks are raised in “spacious thermo-controlled barns” with access to the outdoors.

When it comes to welfare standards, “access to outdoors” doesn’t equate to high welfare or “raised outdoors” or “pasture-raised”. Customer service couldn’t provide much more detail about the ducks’ welfare – so I dug a bit and found the farm where they source their duck. While the farm has excellent sustainability practices, the ducks are raised in a barn. Despite ducks not having the best welfare standards – duck isn’t often available.

But you’ll almost always find chicken and turkey – and in various forms, like breaded, formed into patties, as sausages, formed into meatballs, or baconized.

Customization

Customizations for each protein include various combinations of cut, grade, and amount of protein you can order, and it's different for each protein. Cuts are sized to a portion that optimizes servability, flavor, and readiness for the grill, oven, or stovetop. So you’ll see filets and steaks of different sizes that are determined according to the best cut for cooking and serving.

Meat Selection

Meat selection includes various cuts of beef, poultry, pork, and lamb, and Rastelli’s only offers the best-of-the-best grades and cuts of meat.

For example, beef quality details are as follows:

• USDA-Certified Pasture-Raised:

• In the Great Plains of Nebraska and North Dakota

• American Black Angus cattle fed 100% vegetarian food

• Finished for 120 days on high-moisture corn

• Grass-fed:

• In small herds in the plains of Uruguay

• Black Angus cattle

• On land free from ever receiving any growth/protection chemicals like pesticides

• Wagyu:

• Raised in the Great Lakes Region of the Ohio Valley

• Sourced from the bloodline of the original 5,000 Japanese Wagyu cattle brought to the US in the 1970s

• Holistically raised in all-natural pastures

• Finished on vegetarian high-moisture grains

• Rastelli’s Private Stock/USDA Prime*:

• Raised in Southern New Jersey by founder Ray Rastelli

• American Black Angus cattle

• Fed alfalfa and orchard grass

*USDA Prime is only awarded to 3 to 4% of all beef on the market

As you can see – quality is the name of Rastelli’s game, as most beef is Black Angus, which is considered to produce some of the most densely marbled and full-flavored steaks.

What’s impressive is that founder Ray Rastelli is still hands-on ensuring quality with the highest grade USDA Prime beef. He runs the farm on which the Private Stock is raised to produce USDA prime steaks.

You’ll see beef-grade options when you click on the product card on the main menu. For example, you can order Filet Mignon as Pasture-Raised Black Angus, Wagyu, or Ray’s Private Stock, each of which comes as 6 oz filets.

Fish and Shellfish Selection

Rastelli’s features about 20 seafood options each week from scallops to Mahi Mahi. Fish and shellfish selection includes salmon, shrimp, tuna, Chilean sea bass, halibut, Icelandic cod, scallops, and lobster. Seafood welfare is measured differently than meat and poultry welfare, the highest of which is wild-caught.

All seafood is non-GMO and antibiotic-free and wild-caught or sustainably-raised in free-flowing water fisheries that follow strict sustainability standards for the fish species and their natural environment. About half of Rastelli’s seafood options are wild-caught, while the other half are sourced from fisheries with high sustainability standards.

You’ll also find seafood in various forms like smoked, breaded, and patties or cakes. You might even find bacon-wrapped scallops on the menu – which sell out fast. As with meat options, seafood options are varied and high-quality.

Rastelli’s salmon selection alone is impressive, with 6 variations on the menu each week, including panko-breaded salmon filets and Cedar Plank salmon that comes grill-ready on pre-soaked cedarwood planks. Cedar plank-grilled is one of my favorite salmon preps, so I’m pretty sold on Rastelli’s selection.

Specialty Meats Selection

Here you’ll find lamb, bison, and veal – depending on availability. Veal and bison aren’t always available, while you’ll almost always find lamb as a rack, cubed, ground, or as a rolled and tied boneless leg. All lamb is free from antibiotics, steroids, and hormones, and is 100% grass-fed.

Apps & Sides, Rubs & Butters, Protein Super Packs

If you’re unsure what cuts to choose or how to prep your proteins – you might start here. You can choose a Super Pack of protein like the Best-Sellers Bundle, or for salmon-lovers like myself, a glorious Salmon Lovers Super Pack with a selection of Faroe Island filets, whole filets, burgers, and smoked salmon. Chef’s Super Pack kiss!

You can also choose thoughtfully prepared rubs and butters for easy protein prep. This is great for beginner chefs who want a little leg-up in matching seasonings, spices, and rubs with fish or meat. Rastelli’s curated signature Steak Seasoning, Seafood Seasoning, and various herbed butters so all you have to do is select the cut of meat you want, add seasoning, and cook in the butter of your choice.

Primals – Be Your Own Butcher

Primals are cuts of 2.5–6 pounds of beef that aren’t yet sliced into steaks or cubes. This is convenient if you want to cut more specific portions of beef at a time. Each cut can produce 6–12 steaks depending on how thick you cut them.

Unboxing

All Rastelli's meat and seafood are blast frozen at -40F for safe shipping and to preserve quality integrity during delivery. You'll find an insulated liner and all your meat products in a reusable canvas cooler bag (great for cold and frozen groceries!). The box and insulation are curbside recyclable. Each meat or fish is individually packaged with a clear label detailing the contents and nutrition facts.

Receiving frozen high-quality meat and seafood isn't ideal, but it's the next best solution. As a seafood lover, I prefer eating fish on the 2nd or 3rd day after they've been caught – fresh and never frozen, when the flavor is prime. However, to even receive such high-quality products, I can accept them having been frozen. Rastelli's carefully vacuum seals each product so product integrity is maintained throughout its transit to your doorstep.

You can freeze meat for up to 12 months or thaw it in the fridge in its original packaging. Rastelli's recommends thawing any product in the packaging in which it arrives. However, the service recommends checking product temperature when it arrives to ensure it's been safely refrigerated throughout its delivery.

Once thawed, meat is best consumed within 5 to 7 days and seafood within 3 to 5 days. This should be pretty easy to manage since meat and seafood are packaged separately and in relatively small portions so you can easily choose an amount you can thaw and consume within the recommended time frame. Unless otherwise stated – proteins arrive unseasoned.

Boxes include dry ice, which you shouldn't touch. To dispose of dry ice just place it somewhere safe outside, out of reach of children, where it can easily sublimate.

Cooking with Rastelli’s

What’s convenient about Rastelli’s website is that it offers cooking tips for each product. When you click on a product, you’ll see Best Cooked On (grill, oven, etc.), Ingredients (what meat, any seasonings), Cooking Tips (seasoning, oven heating instructions, length of time required).

Cooking tips are like basic recipes for each protein that ensure you achieve the best final dish. For example, the cooking tips for the Faroe Island Salmon Filets are as follows: “Marinate or season filets with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then place on a hot grill, sautée in a cast iron pan, or place in an oven preheated to 400°. Cook for about 10 min per inch of thickness.”

These tips are great to experience the quality and natural flavor of what you’re prepping. Rastelli’s is confident in the quality of its products and rarely suggests more than a simple salt, pepper, olive oil, prep, and the occasional, garlic, rosemary, and thyme, in its Cooking Tips sections for each product.

But keep the sides, butters, rubs, and extras in mind if you’re feeling fancy because there’s enough available to add plenty of extra fun and flavor to your desired dishes. The rubs and butters are particularly useful to easily add a ton of extra flavor when you cook your dish.  You can try different combinations until you find what’s perfect for you.

You can also choose classic American sides at a family BBQ, like mac & cheese, scalloped potatoes, and creamed spinach. True to the American style – there’s an apple pie and cherry crisp on the menu. While you can’t catch an apple pie or cherry crisp in the wild, you can order one from Rastelli’s, which arrives ready to bake in an oven-safe tray.

For 100+ recommended recipes, you can check the Recipes page linked under About Us. You can filter by protein, prep process, 2 dietary restrictions, and prep time criteria. This is a great place to start for chefs of any skill level. Each recipe even states what other proteins would work well with the recipe.

Shortlist of My Favorite Products

I’m impressed by the array of high-quality produce on this menu, so picking a few wasn’t easy.

Rastelli’s Faroe Island Cedar Plank Salmon

Cedarwood plank grilled salmon is a favorite dish of mine that involves cooking a filet of salmon on a wet cedar wood plank. Typically you need to soak the plank before placing your filet on it and placing it in the grill, but Rastelli’s pre-soaks its cedarwood planks for you. So all you have to do is defrost the salmon and plank in their packaging in the fridge. Each filet only requires about 10 minutes – no flipping required!

Soaking the plank before grilling the salmon on it ensures the plank doesn’t burn, and seasoning the fish before placing it on the plank and then on the grill is best.

Using cedarwood increases flavor and helps maintain moisture. The flames from the grill heat the cedarwood, causing it to release a smoky aroma and flavor that infuses into the fish. The result is a smoky, woody, hardy flavor in the fish. Since the cedarwood is wet, it also releases steam that helps the salmon remain moist and tender.

Rosemary Parmesan Butter

This is just a magical butter that can be used for chicken, beef, fish, or shellfish, which is just about every item on Rastelli’s menu. Who doesn’t love the classic combo of rosemary and parmesan? If you’re unsure where to start when flavoring your filet, this is a great place to start.

Prices

Prices range from $7–$90 per pound for all proteins, including Primals and Packs. Price varies based on the protein's type, cut, grade, and other quality points. You'll see in the list above that prices significantly vary based on these points and range from high-end grocery store prices at $7 for Grass-Fed Ground Black Angus to luxury meats at $90 for USDA Prime Wagyu NY Strip from the original 5,000 Japanese Wagyu cattle brought to the US in the 1970s.

Except for Primals and shellfish, each protein is sold in filets, cubes, or steaks. You’ll see that proteins are sold in different portion sizes, depending on the best size and cut for the type of protein. You might see 5 or 8 oz steaks and 4 or 5 oz filets, or 1 lb of shrimp.

Extras range from $6 for Seasonings to $10 for sides to $36 for an 8-inch Apple Pie. You can add any item to your one-time or recurring order.

While the menu is pricey, you can sign up for a payment plan with Shop Pay, which allows you to separate your order total into small, 0–22.47% interest payments, depending on payment size over what span of time. You can also use Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal – these options are very great and make ordering very accessible, especially considering Rastelli’s doesn’t yet have an app.

Shipping & Delivery

Rastelli’s delivers to the 48 contiguous states and ships orders within 5 business days after they’re placed. Once you place your order, you’ll receive a confirmation email from UPS with your order tracking details and estimated arrival time.

The biggest downside of Rastelli’s service is that there’s no mobile app to manage your orders. To change or cancel your order, you can log into your account to change your order details or contact customer service via email or phone. While you can log in and change order details, speaking with customer service is the most reliable way to confirm order change details.

Rastelli’s doesn’t state any order change deadlines on its website, but given that orders are shipped within 5 days of confirmation, I’d say you should make order changes at least 1 week in advance and confirm those changes with customer service.

How Rastelli’s Works

Rastelli’s offers super flexible ordering options since you can order 1 time or subscribe for deliveries once per week, every other week, or up to every 6 weeks. Signing up is simple.

How to Sign Up

1. Choose your products. You can select from different types of protein, cuts, grades, and portions. Carefully select the right meats and seafood you want.

2. Enter your shipping and delivery details. Make sure you enter the address where you can safely and timely pick up your delivery.

3. Enter payment details. You can pay with a credit card, debit card, or with several integrated payment apps including Shop Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, and Google Pay. With Shop Pay, you can choose a payment plan – double check whether there is interest on your plan.

4. Confirm your payment and check your email for UPS delivery details. You’ll receive a tracking number with an estimated delivery date in your email. Use this to track where your order is, and sign up for email or text updates regarding your delivery.

Managing Your Subscription

The best way to manage your order is through the website or customer service. Since there isn’t a mobile app, you’ll have to log in on Rastelli’s website to change order details. There isn’t a clear order change deadline, so best to make changes sooner rather than later and confirm your order change with customer service.

You can order 1 time or subscribe to deliveries every week or up to every 6 weeks. This super flexible order structure allows you to select a 1-time order for a big party or subscribe to complete your weekly protein requirements. However, not having an app or live chat put Rastelli’s customer service and delivery management somewhat behind the times.

Customer Service

You can only email or call customer service between 9 am to 5 pm EST. Having reviewed dozens of meal and food delivery services, I find this a tad behind. Having a mobile app or at least a live chat or chatbot option adds a layer of convenience that lets me experience the complete convenience a meal or food delivery service can offer.

This isn’t a major inconvenience but can be problematic if there are delivery issues or if you need to make last-minute changes to your order.

The FAQ section doesn't have much information about shipping and delivery. It's better to call customer service if you have questions about an order or a product.

While customer service features are limited, the website is detailed about all its products. It even includes a blog and Steak 101 page to educate you on choosing the best steak for the meals you want.

How Rastelli’s Compares to Other Meal Delivery Services

Rastelli’s vs. Good Chop 

Good Chop is another gourmet butcher service but only sources its product from the US. Its prices are lower than Rastelli’s while still offering similar quality products. However, it doesn’t offer rarer products like veal, lamb, and Wagyu beef. 

Since Good Chop only sources from the US, you won’t find great international products like Smoked Faroe Island salmon. While Rastelli’s prices start at $7.00 per portion, Good Chop starts at $3.74.

Rastelli’s vs. Grassland Beef

Grassland Beef offers grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, wild-caught seafood, and other family farm-produced items like raw honey and organic nuts. Like Rastelli’s proteins, Grassland’s proteins are all non-GMO, free from hormones and antibiotics, and sourced from family run farms across the US that only use sustainable, environmentally-friendly farming practices.

Grassland Beef’s menu is far more extensive than Rastelli’s and includes products like elk, rabbit, venison, ghee, broths, organ meats, and much more. Prices start at $2.00 per portion.

Rastelli’s vs. Snake River Farms

Snake River Farms specializes in American Gold Wagyu beef and Kurobuta pork, while Rastelli's offers a wide variety of high-quality meats. All Snake River Farms products are sourced from family-run farms only in the US while Rastelli's sources their meats from both domestic and international farms.

Both companies emphasize quality and sustainability, but Rastelli’s can cater to a wider variety of preferences while Snake River Farms products caters to those seeking more exclusive, luxury meats. Prices start at $12.00 per portion.

The Bottom Line: Is Rastelli's Worth It?

If Rastelli’s product prices are within your budget – you can set up a subscription. The company’s commitment to quality is evident in every cut of grass-fed, pasture-raised, grain-finished, wild-caught, organic protein on the menu. Plus, you can rest assured that you’re supporting sustainably-run, family-owned, and operated farms that prioritize animal and environmental welfare.

The convenience of having Rastelli’s high-quality products delivered can’t be overstated. It allows you to effortlessly elevate weekly meals and enjoy a fine dining experience in the comfort of your own home. From $7 per pound 100% grass-fed beef to $90 per pound of Wagyu Strip – you’re in for a fine feast.

FAQ

What sets Rastelli's apart from other meat and seafood delivery services in 2023?

Rastelli's only sources meat and seafood from family-owned, sustainable farms and fisheries, which is why you’ll see farm sources from all over the world. The founders – brothers Ray and Tony – curated their product sourcing since the company opened almost 5 decades ago and have found the best farms to offer premium cuts of organic, grass-fed, and wild-caught meat and seafood free from hormones, steroids, and antibiotics.

How does Rastelli's ensure the freshness and quality of their meat and seafood?

Rastelli's works directly with farmers and fishermen to ensure its practices meet rigorous animal and environmental welfare standards. It also use innovative packaging techniques, such as vacuum-sealing and flash-freezing, to maintain freshness during transit. All products are shipped in insulated, eco-friendly packaging with dry ice to guarantee that your meat and seafood arrive at your doorstep in perfect condition.

Can I customize my Rastelli's order to suit my dietary needs?

Yes – Unless otherwise stated, Rastellis’ products arrive raw and unseasoned. You’ll still find some meats already rubbed and seasoned, but most arrive raw and without seasoning. This gives you total freedom for choosing whatever prep style you prefer. You can choose the type, cut, grade, and amount of protein.

Are Rastelli's products ethically and sustainably sourced?

Rastelli's is committed to only sourcing from farms that follow the strictest standards of animal welfare, environmental welfare, and sustainability practices. The company prioritizes partnering with local, family-owned operations whenever possible. Rastelli’s sourcing practices are what created and sustained its reputation as a meat and seafood delivery service that’s a cut above the rest.

How does Rastelli's delivery work, and what are the shipping costs?

Rastelli's delivers to the contiguous US and shipping costs vary according to order total. You’ll receive an email with an order confirmation and UPS tracking information as soon as you confirm your order. Shipping varies from $0 to $25 depending on the order amount and delivery location. Shipping is free for all orders $200 and up.