Food in Transit--Airplane and Airport food

First of all, I am completely aware of the bad reputation that airplane food gets--precooked food reheated in airplane galleys are bound to taste worse than food prepared in a restaurant's kitchen; however, I do believe that it can still be judged for what it is, as it is still food. Of course, I do not expect gourmet meals from airplane food, but from my travels through the years using different airlines, I know that relatively good food is still a possibility...even when you are hundreds of miles above ground.

Hawaiian Airlines (Seattle to Honolulu). Food was absolutely atrocious—breakfast burrito with a blueberry muffin. Okay fine. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, because it was at least edible to some extent. Then again, just the fact that I have to qualify this statement by saying that the food was “at least edible” emphasizes its status on the borderline of inedibility. The breakfast burrito had a similar texture as what I would imagine foam to taste like (that is to say, Styrofoam foam sheets that you get when you have a big television)—obviously, I’ve never had foam in my life. Digging into the burrito with my fork excavated out some congealed egg-mushroom-potato-corn mix that was grayish in color. To top this concoction all off, the “sauce” over the burrito was a dried-up film of tomato-ish flavor. Although this sounds pretty disgusting (it was), it wasn’t too bad…I ate some of it because I was hungry. Moving on from my traumatic experience of eating the “burrito,” I ate some of the blueberry muffin that came with the meal. Overall, it was just a normal blueberry muffin, albeit having very little blueberries. I ate the top and picked out the blueberries. Here’s hoping the flight to Manila will yield better-tasting food.

(this is kind of what the burrito looked like--stole the picture from online--but the "sauce" was more reddish)-->note the un-sauce nature of the sauce, which was a solid film instead of a liquid substance.

Honolulu Airport. Americanized Chinese food—fried egg rolls with bright red ketchup and fried rice. Given our mutual disgust for the burrito (see above), this was not bad in comparison. Not even exaggerating with the bright red ketchup. It was as bright, fire-engine red as paint or lipstick thanks to artificial food coloring—I don’t think I’ve ever seen actual tomatoes that red.

Hawaiian Airlines (Honolulu to Manila). Food was significantly better than the first leg of my flight (which I suppose is not saying that much). The two full meals that were served on the flight were pork adobo with rice (it was either that or chicken in tomato sauce) and cold bihon noodles—both of them taking into account all the Filipinos on the plane.

The pork adobo wasn’t bad—the sauce was done correctly and had a passable balance of garlic, soy sauce and vinegar (main ingredients of adobo); my problem with it however was that it mostly consisted of FAT. I mean, there are people out there who love eating just the pork fat with rice but I find the notion rather disgusting and unhealthy, so I separated the meat from the fat and ate what little there was of it. Adobo came with chocolate, salad and bread—all were on the average level, yet tending towards the below-average side of things.

Cold bihon noodles weren’t as bad as I expected (the “bad expectations” coming from my dad’s stories, as he flew Hawaiian airlines previously and complained that they served him cold noodles, which he was quite upset about, given that it was a long flight and he wanted something warm in his stomach). Since I have a sore throat at the moment, the cold, citrusy (I sprinkled some lemon on top) noodles felt nice going down my scratchy throat. Tastewise, the noodles were fine too—just your average thin rice noodles with meat, vegetables and some soy sauce. My sister and I skipped the ice cream that came with this meal due to the dietary restrictions imposed by our respective sicknesses.