Plain Plane Food

I’ve done quite a bit of traveling by airplane during my life, and always in the business/economy section. This is the same thing as saying that I’ve had a lot of truly bad meals in my time.

Yes, airline food can often go beyond mediocre and run the gamut of truly bad. I’ve never understood why this should be the case, since airport food before you board a plane is generally quite good, if ridiculously expensive. I would settle for the equivalent of decent fast food — perhaps an oxymoron — on the airplane itself. Alas, this is usually not the case.

For example, on a recent long international flight that was about 10 hours, we were offered breakfast and dinner. Breakfast consisted of a small bowl of plain yogurt — which I hate — and a fig bar. Laying the yogurt aside, I figured the fig bar would be sort of like a Fig Newton, which I like. Unfortunately, it was so hard that I couldn’t eat it. You could have pounded nails with it, quite literally.

Between breakfast and dinner, we had “lunch,” which consisted of your choice of beverages, alcoholic and otherwise. Intelligent, experienced passengers always choose something alcoholic. You’re about 35,000 feet up in the air at this point, so what the hell! It takes a lot of faith to travel by air; a little sacramental wine couldn’t hurt.

Then, after a decent interval, we were offered dinner. The choices were chicken, beef or pasta. Unfortunately, many of the entrées had not been properly marked. The poor flight attendants had a terrible time discerning which dinner was which. They finally just handed them out somewhat randomly, with apparently no one the wiser. Which is the saddest part.

One of the worst things about it is that the flyees in first class eat like emperors while we economy class people are starving back in Stalingrad. Sometimes the attendants have to wheel the actual food from the back of the airplane up to the first-class area. I’ve noticed that they accomplish this task in a hurry, so the rest of us don’t get a good look (or smell).

But the smell of good food can’t be hidden easily, and I’ve also glimpsed first class meals when the curtains between sections were whisked open briefly (I’ve noticed they also open and close these extremely quickly). Steak, shrimp, real pasta that actually looks like pasta — their food seems to be the bomb! (Not literally, for any airline security people who happen to read this.)

Among the many other mediocre meal items I’ve been offered in the past: an extremely green, extremely hard banana that could pound nails when the fig bar gives out, cookie dust in packets that seemed to have been run over by the jet’s wheels and crackers that actually cracked when you touched them! Many food items seem to have been recycled from a previous trip, with packaging far from pristine.

They will also offer you snacks like a package of nuts from time to time. Turn these down, especially if your dental insurance isn’t paid up. The airlines have special groves of nut trees in Brazil that grow the hardest nuts possible. Like the yogurt and fig bar breakfast, they figure on re-using these items on many fliers before they wear out. Sort of like the plastic food items you see displayed in the windows of some restaurants — not really meant to be eaten.

Next time, we’ll discuss why the “care package” I was given after a flight was cancelled consisted of a bag made in Cambodia; a comb, toothbrush and shaving cream from China; toothpaste made in India and a razor from Israel. In the meantime, if you fly anywhere, stick with the drinks.