WWFB: In-Flight Edition
The scene: Fully booked Delta flight from Milwaukee to San Francisco. I’m wedged in the middle seat between my husband and some guy. Flight meals being what they are, I try to do my eating on land, but by the time we were over the Great Plains states, I was getting kinda peckish.
As I skimmed the menu card, taking in the bland sandwich and sandwich-adjacent offerings, my already meager hopes of finding something worth digging out my credit card for diminished. Turkey wrap? A salad whose description includes the word “mayonnaise”? Thank you but no.
Suddenly, my eyes lit upon a snack box offering that seemed almost too good to be true. I wanted to pinch myself, but my arms were pinned down due to the armrest hogs to my left and right, so I just blinked dramatically a few times. Could it be real?
I gotta hand it to Delta, they put together hands-down The. Most. Obnoxious. snack box one could possibly consume in a confined space with strangers…so naturally that is the one that I ordered.
- Garlic & basil olives? CHECK
- Little tubs of garlicky garlicky hummus and garlicky garlicky sun-dried tomato “bruschetta spread”? CHECK and CHECK
- The world’s loudest pita chips (and also hipster-est, having been “Baked in Brooklyn” according to the multiple edgy fonts on the bag)? CHECK
- Almonds? Crunchy, crunchy almonds? CHECK
- As for the fruit course, my Market Box sadly did not contain the dried apricots pictured on the menu; instead, there was some weird little fig-based fruit bar. CHECK-ish, I guess?
- And let’s not forget that tiny little Meyer Lemon ginger “chew” to round out the assortment. I don’t know about you but where I was raised, “chew” is strictly a verb, so I was a bit skeptical of the dessert course. No CHECK for this linguistic enigma.
Being in the middle seat, I felt it was my obligation to savor this meal as slowwwwwwwwwwwly as possible, so that my seat-mates could enjoy it vicariously as well. Especially the guy in the window seat whose Air Pods were too loud, revealing his questionable taste in music.
They say your sense of taste is dulled at altitude, which is why airline food is typically so salty and/or sweet. So I went into this expecting BIG FLAVOR. Here’s what I got:
- The olives were great for 35,000 feet: unmistakably olive-y, garlicky, and basil-y, as advertised.
- The hummus was…adequate. It was a little too finely pureed for my taste, but you take what you can get in the sky.
- The “bruschetta spread” was simultaneously super bland and also faintly chemical-tasting.
- I had hoped those pita chips would taste like something other than lightly salted cardboard — maybe heavily salted cardboard? But still they managed to disappoint. (Sorry, Brooklyn hipsters — your pita chips are nothing to write home about.
- I chucked the rest of the items in my purse because you never know when you’re going to need some emergency protein or sugar or…a “chew.”
VERDICT: 2/5 — Would not order again. Well, I might…if my seat-mates exercise poor armrest etiquette or engage in the unforgivable in-flight sin of playing games on their phone with the volume on and no headphones. In that case I’ll order two!