Sydney’s top chefs have welcomed us into their restaurants for decades with dishes that celebrate the Harbour City’s abundant and diverse range of locally-sourced seafood, meats and fresh produce; now they’re also welcoming us into their homes. Not literally but with renowned chefs such as Peter Gilmore (Quay), Lennox Hastie (Firedoor), Rob Cockerill (Bennelong), Richard Ptacinik (OTTO) and Jacqui Challinor (Nomad) manning the kitchens for OzHarvest’s new weekly meal services, Harvest Bites, it’s the next best thing.

“The chefs have full control of the menu with a brief to make food with love,” says Louise Tran, Harvest Bites’ Project Leader. “The aim is to create delicious restaurant-quality meals with a home-style feel. So far we have had a wide range of food, from braised beef cheeks, coq au vin, empanadas and lasagne, and all absolutely delicious!”

For Challinor, her menu was simple: “Meatballs! Who doesn’t like meatballs? When I think of homely delicious things I love to eat, it’s meatballs.”

“With this (Harvest Bites) this is us cooking at our most basic. The stuff that we love to cook – we don’t go home and cook three-hat dishes for ourselves every night,” she says, “this is the food we love to eat, and I think it’s almost rather personal on some level. I’m sort of inviting people into my home to embrace what I love to eat and what I love to cook.” For Challinor, that means pork and veal meatballs with baked white polenta, which is the featured menu for the week commencing July 20.

If you’re after something with a bit more bite, for July 13, Chin Chin’s Graeme Hunt’s menu features green curry with chicken, apple, eggplant, green chilli and krachai coconut rice plus Vietnamese iced coffee panna cotta for dessert.

New chefs and restaurants are being added every week, says Tran, “and we also have Colin Fassnidge and Matt Moran coming up soon as well as OzHarvest’s own chef Travis Harvey who has even produced some in-house sauces that are now up for sale!

As wonderful as it is to get restaurant-quality meals home-delivered, Tran notes that there is much more to the initiative in that it also enables chefs to retain staff and support their own suppliers. This, and “raise money to help support the growing number of people suffering food insecurity.”

The meal packs are designed for two (from $63) or four (from $105) and include the cost of delivery.  Each week, there’ll be a different menu prepared by one of OzHarvest’s favourite Ambassador chefs. Order online by 2pm Thursday for delivery on the following Monday. You can also add on OzHarvest’s housemade products – green jalapeno fermented chilli sauce or Goes-on-Everything Korean red pepper and sesame oil.

All profits from Harvest Bites goes to OzHarvest and every purchase allows them to deliver at least 40 meals to people in need.