A few years ago, Jennifer Leblond took over the reins of Dinner is Served by Dianne’s Catering from her mother Dianne.
Dinner is Served operates as a take-out business at its Lakeshore Drive location.
“We have a lot of great customers, lots of single people who don’t want to cook a full meal, lots of families who are really busy, and we cater to a lot of seniors. We have food for everyone. We definitely aim to keep our meals low sodium. We’re not big on adding salt,” explained Leblond who is starting a new line of meals.
“We call them Aligned Athletics Approved, that is the business we are attached to here. There are personal trainers in the gym at Aligned Athletics, and they come into the kitchen and work with us on protein portion sizes, and how much carbs and how much vegetables. And if they’re happy with the meal, they get an Aligned Athletics Approved sticker.”
The Aligned Athletics meals are typically made on Tuesdays.
“We call this a grab-and-go option. They are not available hot, we cook them in the morning, and you can take them from our fridge and reheat them. Our schedule changes a little bit throughout the summer with the amount of catering and farmer’s markets that we do, but we do aim to have those meals ready every Tuesday.”
During the summer months, they do not have any hot meal options to order, they do however have pre-cooked food available to take home.
“We are only not doing meals to order; our kitchen is fully open. We are cooking all of our baked beans and all of our freezer items. They are available all summer long, we just don’t have meals to order for the summer,” Leblond explained.
“We have lots of options in the fridge and the freezer that you can take home and reheat, and lots of summer salads. You can call in ahead to order a large size salad for your family function or something like that,” stated Leblond.
One of their most popular salads is the loaded baked potato salad.
“It has your bacon, your cheese, your green onions, with a little bit of a ranch flavour to it. It is a popular one for us.”
Other salads include classic tuna macaroni salad, tortellini cucumber feta and the return of their broccoli salad.
Leblond points out that “the amount of vegetables in the garden pasta salad is nearly equal to that of the pasta.”
Fruit salsa and cinnamon chips are another favourite among customers.
If you want to satisfy your sweet tooth, there are plenty of desserts available.
“The Anxious Bakers bring us their goods. They have wonderful carrot cakes, brownies, and cookies. But we also have sticky toffee pudding and lots of butter tarts. We also have some nice desserts that you can take home and cook yourself in the air fryer like churros (a type of fried dough) and cinnamon poppers. We also sell cookie dough.”
If you are looking for a cool treat, stop by for ice cream.
“We have eight flavours of ice cream. We sell ice cream by the cone or by the cup. The kid’s flavours are really popular; cotton candy flavour, that kind of stuff.”
Dips are also popular in the summer.
“Some of our more popular dips would be our buffalo chicken dip. We also have a pepperoni pizza dip, and a spinach dip.”
With the return of fall, the menu will once again offer hot foods.
“Come September, we will be back with our hot menu options; our turkey dinners and all of our hearty fall foods,” Leblond stated.
“We have some of the classics. We have chicken fingers and fries, fish and chips, things like that but not in the summer. The foods that we cook are your homestyle favourites. We do a lot of roast beef and turkey dinners, chili and lots of soups. We have lots of frozen soups. Our lasagna is extremely popular, and we have a really nice, buttered chicken. So, it is your homestyle favourites that maybe take a really long time to cook, and you have to make a big batch of something, well, we make it for you and you don’t have to cook the whole thing.”
The best place to find out more about Dinner is Served is on Facebook.
“Again, starting in September, we post our menu every week. Our menu changes every week, so Tuesday through Friday we cook different homestyle dinners and that is kind of our special of the day,” explained Leblond.
“Meanwhile, for the summer months, if you were coming in, we have some wonderful steaks, that are individually frozen and uncooked. We would probably suggest maybe a steak and some of our nice pasta salads, or we do cheese balls and nacho dips. We have lots of different grocery items that you can choose from.”
Bulk food items are also available to stock your home freezer.
“We also take some of those bulk cases and pair them down into smaller packaging, if you want that restaurant-quality item, but don’t want the whole case. So, with deep-fried pickles for example, you can buy the whole bag, or you can buy a smaller package that might only have 12 or 14 pieces in it,” shared Leblond.
“I love when people come in and they’re trying to help somebody in their family have ready-made meals in the freezer for them, real home-cooked food that they can eat well, when they don’t feel like cooking for themselves.”
Located at 540 Lakeshore Drive beside the LCBO, Dinner is Served is open seven days a week.
