Connections: Dinner, Jeeves?

We are in a funny place right now, having moved back home to East Hampton after a medical sojourn in Massachusetts, but not quite able to properly settle into our old ways, because while we were away much of the house was painted, and things are still at sixes and sevens, boxes piled on the sunroom table, furniture askew.

Everything in the kitchen and pantry — every spoon, every ancient juicer, every lidless Spode sugar bowl — was packed away in a Pod storage unit in the backyard during this long-overdue paint job, and we can’t put it all back in place until the cabinets are cleaned and their drawers relined (with pretty William Morris wallpaper, if all goes to plan).

Who knew the digital age would come to our rescue once again? I told you all about my adventures with Lyft ride-hailing in a previous column, and now I am going to tell you how gung-ho I am for apps that bring you a hot dinner with the press of a button.

The truth is, despite thinking of myself as an analog kind of person, I have come to rely on my cellphone for all sorts of things, including the accumulation of information. My memory for numbers in general, and for phone numbers in particular — FE-9-1230 was what one dialed to reach my childhood house —  is no longer worth boasting about. Having a smartphone at the ready makes me feel smarter.

Apps have entered my daily life only over the last month. My daughter, who tends to be even more curmudgeonly about screen time than me, is the one who told me about DoorDash. The proverbial cupboard was bare when I decided to try it; it was also pouring rain, and no one was in the mood to go fetch takeout sushi. But in no more than 10 minutes, I had ordered some fabulous dosas from Hampton Chutney in Amagansett, and within another few minutes an intrepid driver-deliverer was ringing the doorbell, cilantro relish and mango lassis in hand. 

DoorDash is an on-demand food delivery service founded in 2013 by four Stanford students. Will Andy Fang, Stanley Tang, Tony Xu, and Evan Moore become as famous, or as rich, as Mark Zuckerberg? That seems unlikely, but to an old-fashioned person like me, a simple meal-delivery app seems like a revelation.

If you watch some of the television programs that I do, you have seen ads for GrubHub, a nationwide company that is in hot competition with DoorDash. This morning, I read that DoorDash has surpassed GrubHub and is the fastest-growing food-delivery service in America. 

I’m often heard praising the pleasures of village life, where one has access to the library or the next screening of “The Favourite” just by strolling out the door. Still, I am beginning to see the light when it comes to apps, especially for people with mobility issues. 

I’m not an expert yet, of course. Maybe someone better versed in these things can tell me know if it was good etiquette to have entered his tip on the electronic order instead of providing one in cash. . . ?