mise. — Meal Prep App
Reviewed: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | Student Project
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App Summary
mise. is a meal prep planning web app with a polished, editorial aesthetic. It presents a personal cooking dashboard with three main sections accessible via a top navigation bar: Dashboard, Recipes, and Meal Plan. The Dashboard greets the user by name (displayed as the placeholder "Your Name"), shows today's date, and surfaces four stat cards — Saved Recipes, Times Cooked, Avg Rating, and Planned Meals. Below the stats, a food profile shows dietary tags (flexitarian, nuts free, gluten free) and cuisine preferences (Italian, Mexican, Japanese), followed by an Upcoming Meals preview and a recipe card gallery. The Recipes page lists all saved recipes with category filter chips (All, Italian, dinner, classic, salad, lunch, quick), prep time, and a "Made X×" count. Clicking a recipe card opens a detailed modal with ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and metadata (last made date, rating, cook count). The Meal Plan page shows scheduled meals by date with meal type labels (LUNCH, DINNER) and prep times. Navigation between all three pages works smoothly as a single-page application.
Features Observed
4 stat cards: saved recipes, times cooked, avg rating, planned meals.
Dietary restrictions and cuisine preference pills displayed prominently.
Filter chips on the Recipes page allow sorting by category/meal type.
Clicking a recipe opens a detailed modal with ingredients + steps.
Date-grouped schedule of upcoming meals with type and prep time.
Serif + muted earth-tone palette; feels intentional and editorial.
Unexpected Behavior & Issues
- Placeholder The user's name is hardcoded as "Your Name" both in the dashboard greeting and the profile avatar initials ("YN"). There is no input or prompt for the user to actually set their name, making it feel unfinished.
- Static Data All recipe data, stats, and meal plan dates appear to be hardcoded. The "Upcoming Meals" section shows February 24–25 dates even when accessed in April 2026 — the data is not dynamic or relative to the current date.
- Limited Content Only 2 recipes exist (Spaghetti Bolognese and Chicken Caesar Salad). While the recipe filter chips include categories like "dinner," "classic," "salad," and "quick," they don't filter to distinct subsets — both recipes appear under most categories.
- No Interactivity The "View full plan →" and "See all →" links on the dashboard, as well as the "Your" profile button in the nav, appear to be non-functional — no click behavior was detected beyond the three main nav pages.
- Meal Plan Clicking on meal items in the Meal Plan page (which says "click any to view the recipe") did not appear to open the recipe modal as described in the subtitle hint — the functionality seemed missing or inconsistently implemented.
- Avatar The top-right user avatar shows "YN" (from "Your Name") with no dropdown or account page accessible — it appears decorative only.
Improvement Prompt
1. PERSONALIZATION: On first load, display a short onboarding modal asking for the user's name, dietary preferences, and favorite cuisines. Save this to localStorage so the dashboard greets them by their real name and reflects their actual food profile.
2. DYNAMIC DATES: Make all meal plan dates relative to today's actual date (use JavaScript's Date object). "Upcoming Meals" should show meals scheduled from today forward, not hardcoded February dates.
3. ADD MORE RECIPES: Expand the recipe library to at least 8–10 recipes across different categories so the filter chips (dinner, salad, quick, etc.) actually produce meaningfully different filtered results.
4. FIX MEAL PLAN CLICK: Implement the recipe modal opening when a user clicks any meal item in the Meal Plan page — the page subtitle promises this behavior but it doesn't work.
5. ADD RECIPE BUTTON: Add a simple "＋ Add Recipe" button on the Recipes page that lets users input a new recipe name, category, cook time, ingredients, and steps — saving it to state (and optionally localStorage) so the library grows.
6. PROFILE DROPDOWN: Make the "YN" avatar button in the nav open a small dropdown with options to edit the user's name and food preferences rather than being purely decorative.