Chicken or Pasta?

Three infamous words... 'chicken or pasta?' lead me to dedicate this post to the culinary world that is airline food.  Having just spent more than 24 hours traveling from an icy cold ATL to a steaming hot Dar es Salaam, I have had ample time to reflect on this topic.  [I'd considered taking photos of the food on my seatback table but in an effort to keep this blog more aesthetically pleasing this photo of the scenery out the plane window will have to suffice; extra points to anyone who can tell where/what I was flying over].


In an era of downsizing and no-frills airlines, I should start by saying that I am not ungrateful for the food I was served.  At least there was something vaguely edible to put in my mouth during two more than 8 hour flights, right?  That said, the fact that a banana was about the highlight of the airplane food should say a lot (especially because I'm not much for bananas).

Always one for numbers, I think that the quality of airline food can be generally defined by a simple mathematical rule:  the farther away from the United States an airline is based, the better the quality of the food.  Because of my employment I am somewhat constrained to flying US-based carriers, so it is a bit tricky to actually test this hypothesis, but in a world of codeshare agreements most any flight can be run by a US airline on paper, so I have done a bit of research to support this.

Let's get down to my recent flights:  Carrier D (US-based) vs. Carrier K (Dutch).  In order to keep the playing field level I chose the pasta options on both flights.  D's was simply the 'pasta' option and was some sort of baked ziti with a creamy/tomato/cheese sauce.  A bit liked baked rubber with sauce.  K's pasta was billed as 'gorgonzola pasta', so got points for billing itself as something that might be a menu item, but the actual pasta itself wasn't far off of D's, in fact was rather reminiscent of the pasta on the D flight.  D's pasta came with a salad, bread, and pre-packaged brownie.  K's came with a Asian-inspired salad, seemingly fresher bread in that it came out of a separate basket and wasn't automatically distributed with your tray, and some sort of green dessert that I didn't try.  All in all, not a huge difference in terms of the food in the dinner/lunch meal.  Next, the breakfast/snack meal (I know, why am I even complaining, I got fed not once, but twice on my flights!).  Here, D's option was an english muffin with some sort of egg that came pre-packaged and was so devoid of color or flavor that I couldn't eat it.  The breakfast was accompanied with a banana (yum) and I think juice.  K's snack, on the other hand, came with a small green and potato salad, a small fruit salad, a piece of quiche that wasn't great (but remember, this was on a plane), and some sort of dessert that I again didn't try.  K definitely came out ahead on this one.  Conclusion #1:  no 5-star food from either airline, but at least K served something that might be counted as food. 

Where K really scored big though was in presentation.  K has gone all out in this department--each meal was served in a special box emblazoned with a lovely photo of somewhere in the world and an inspirational quote; in my case there was some sort of Asian theme on my dinner box.  Perhaps a bit hokey to some but I liked it; by giving the meal a theme it made the meal actually feel like a real meal, something I might want to put in my mouth.  Conclusion #2:  pretty pictures and trite quotes make food taste better at 37,000 feet.

Last but definitely not least, D kind of struck out when it came to alcoholic beverages.  Not only do they now charge for alcohol on international flights (except for a glass of wine with the meal), but they charge $7!  True, it's healthier to not drink on a flight, but come on, we're talking a long flight here.  Conclusion #3:  serve alcohol, it helps to disguise bad food.

I guess I'll have to try the chicken on the way home.