Serious XM Podcasts.
Hey, everyone.
It's Dan here with another Sporkful Reheat for you.
And as we approach Christmas and New Year's, I know a lot of folks have off.
A lot of you may be getting on airplanes.
And so this episode is going to be right up your alley.
Whether you're on a flight where they're serving you food which is less and less common, or you're bringing food on the airplane or eating in the airport.
There's a lot to navigate and I got some tricks of the trade for you in this episode.
Now, this one is from way back in the day, super deep freezer situation here.
This is from back when my friend Mark Garrison was my co-host.
And in this one, Mark and I share our respective strategies for navigating, eating and air travel, including our ideal beverage cart orders.
There's also a bunch of very absurd hacks involved.
And I should add, after this episode came out, I did some more research on this topic.
We never did a whole episode, but one of the things about eating on an airplane is that the air is very dry.
And so your nasal passages dry out.
And so taste sensation is reduced.
So, like when they make food to serve on an airplane, they make it saltier because you don't taste salt as much.
That's also some people theorize.
That's why people like a Bloody Mary or tomato juice in airplanes.
It's kind of like very flavorful.
And like the salt kind of hits you in a different way on an airplane.
So that's the way to keep in mind if you're making something to bring on the airplane over season it.
All right, that's my tip for you that's not in this episode.
But I think you'll have a lot of fun with this one.
If you are traveling this holiday season, whether it's on a plane, a train, or a car, safe travels.
Finally remember, if there's an episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer, send me an email or a voice memo to hello at sporkfulcom.
Tell me your first name, location, which episode you want us to reheat, and why.
Thanks so much, and enjoy.
This is The Sporkful.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman along with Mark Garrison.
Hey there, Dan.
We're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you.
Because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely and because if history has taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases.
Mark Garrison, how are you doing?
I'm good.
I had a leftover chicken breast that I converted into a sandwich and that actually worked out pretty well.
Folks, first off, we want to thank you for tuning in.
As always, we really appreciate all the great feedback we get.
We appreciate you taking the time to tune into The Sporkful.
And if you haven't already, we want to encourage you to connect with us and each other at sporkfulcom.
All right, let's go ahead and get into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is airplane food.
Now, before we actually get on the plane, you're going to have to go through security and take off your shoes and do all that drama.
And then you will be waiting for your flight in the airport.
That's a totally different food situation.
We're going to talk a little about that.
I know Dan, you've given a lot of thought to what can be achieved in this very limited sphere of the airport.
Well, I actually didn't give it that much thought, because I don't know how much thought was required.
I think that the airport is really one of the most just, completely utterly barren wastelands of food that exists anywhere.
I mean it's worse than the mall food court, because it probably tends to have fewer options than a mall food court.
Yeah.
And there's just something.
I don't know.
You know how there's certain...
Smells and tastes that are unique to the airplane.
Like the recirculated air, smell the seats.
There's a certain smell of an airplane.
There's something about that that must also get into the airport.
Because even things like draft beer, I've never gotten a good draft beer at an airport.
As if the air pressure is different in the airport.
Yeah.
Not just in the sky.
It's usually too carbonated.
They often frost the mugs, which is annoying.
We hate that, yeah.
We have a whole episode about how to properly serve beer.
Exactly.
But I just feel like and on top of that you just have these places charge ridiculous amounts of money for the food because they know that you're a prisoner in there
And now there's this sort of trend where I've started to see what appear to be nicer restaurants in airports.
Yeah.
And with outrageous prices.
Now, first of all, I haven't been inside the kitchen of an airport restaurant.
But you know, I'm pretty sure that they don't set you up with a true full-fledged professional kitchen when you lease space for your restaurant in the airport.
And when places don't get adequate space to set up a proper kitchen, what they end up doing is cooking a lot of food off-site and then reheating it.
Yes, exactly.
And that's no disrespect to people who work at the airport, but- We know that they have limited tools.
Right.
And I was stranded at the airport for a few hours over the winter and there was one restaurant there where it was like a steakhouse.
I don't remember what it was called, but it was a steakhouse in LaGuardia.
All the entrees were over $30.
Wow.
Now, who in their right mind is going to go and pay $35 or $40 for a steak in an airport?
There is just no way that's going to be worth that much.
I'll pay $35 for a steak once every year or two to have an awesome steak.
Yeah, if it's good.
Not in an airport.
And so I just really want to encourage people.
Anytime you're going to be going anywhere on an airplane, bring a sandwich from home.
Ooh, advertisements.
Yummy.
Welcome back to A Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman.
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Thank you.
Now, back to this week's reheat.
So there's a pretty proscribed way in which they serve the food and beverages on the airplane.
They start off with the drink cart.
Then after that cart gets put away, it goes to the food cart.
So let's take these in the same order.
The beverage cart comes up to you, Mark.
Would you like something to drink, sir?
How do you respond?
One thing that I always keep in mind is you never know.
I mean, you'll get some sense based on the length of the flight, but you never know how often you'll actually see that drink card.
So this may be your only shot at not free.
I mean, obviously, they're rolling all these costs into the price of your overpriced ticket.
But this may be your only shot at hydration that you don't have to purchase separately.
So main thing is be very nice and politely ask for the full can unopened, because then you can kind of like stash that can away, because they'll often open it like as a service.
Like, hey, we're a good service.
We're going to open the can for you.
We won't make you do this exertive labor of like popping a can.
But then you can't stash it easily.
So ask for it unopened.
And then –
Ask for something else.
It's not coming out of their pocket.
They'll give you something else there.
And I think the ideal airplane drink is to have a juice, whichever type of juice they have, and then ask them to add like a splash of soda water or club soda.
And then you have like a little fizziness to it.
I think fizziness is very important on planes, because I do notice that you drink more ginger ale on airplanes than I think at any other point in your life.
That and tomato juice.
Tomato juice, too, yeah.
People who it would never dawn on them to ever want tomato juice, let alone ask for it, are always asking for tomato juice on the airplane.
Yeah.
They don't even carry tomato juice at 99% of restaurants, and yet they have it on the airplane.
It's always on the plane.
I don't get it.
I agree with you, Mark.
I never ask for the unopened can, but I do ask for the whole can.
Unopened is interesting.
I mean, you're more aggressive than I am.
I'll just ask for the whole can.
It's not aggression.
It's just like, yeah.
And I ask very nicely too, but I feel like they still give me a face when I'm just asking for the whole can, as opposed to just the little glass.
They give you that little plastic cup with those three giant ice cubes.
It's like one sip of soda or whatever.
So you've got to get the whole can if you want to have an actual drink.
But that's an interesting strategy, the unopened can.
I could look into that.
Store it away, yeah.
I did once get a free beer on a domestic flight.
I mean, imagine that.
This is very rare in this day and age, yeah.
But it was only because I had what the flight attendant described as the worst seat on the airplane, which was the last row.
So the seat doesn't go back because you're pressed up against a wall.
Yeah.
Right by the bathroom.
By the bathroom.
And I was on the window.
You're practically in the coat closet.
Yeah.
And I ordered a beer expecting to pay for it.
And she said, this one's on the house.
You got the worst seat on the plane.
So I was like, if I knew that that seat always came with a free beer, I might request it.
I don't know if it always comes with a free beer.
I'm just warning you.
I got to check SeatGuru.com or whatever to see if that's, you know.
But I do like to order an alcoholic beverage on the plane.
Not so much beer, but I'll often want a little caffeine on a plane, because maybe I'm going somewhere and I want to be excited for it and I want some artificial excitement.
And I do think that, even though they've jacked up the prices now, if you get a Jack and Coke for 6 and they give you the little bottle of Jack Daniels, which is really like one and a half cocktails worth of Jack Daniels,
It's a little more because I think 50 milliliters.
You get a little bit extra in those mini bottles.
Right, and so $6 for one and a half Jack and Cokes, plus you always end up with extra Coke.
So for $6, you're getting one and a half Jack and Cokes and a third of a can of Coke.
That's pretty good for $6.
It's actually not a terrible price.
And you can mix it on your own.
But what's key to do there is to ask for ice on the side.
Because the soda has not usually been chilled.
Liquor has not been chilled.
And so when you first pour over the ice, you're going to get a lot of ice melting.
You're not going to be able to make a great cocktail.
But I basically am constantly adding soda, whiskey and ice back and forth to keep the ratios of the Jack and Coke just so.
Got it.
So you need extra ice on the side if you're going to work those ratios.
Otherwise, it's going to end up being something you don't want.
So the amount of food you get will obviously depend on how far you're going.
Some flights are shorter.
You may just get a snack.
So, Dan, let's say we're on one of these short flights, a couple hours.
The only thing you're getting is a drink and a snack at most.
What's your thinking on that?
How do you strategize?
Well, there's often not a whole lot of choice.
But I do think that some of those snacks are nice little treats.
I don't think you should be shy about asking for a second bag.
Again, politely and nicely.
It's not like there's a shortage of bags of four pretzels.
Yeah.
I especially love the bar mix type of a thing, where you get those little flat boomerangs in there and just sort of get a little more variety of flavor.
I'm a sucker for nuts.
They don't give out nuts as often anymore because they're a little more expensive.
Also too, like even when you get nuts now, they're rarely honey roasted, because I can always remember like being on an airplane.
And when I was younger, I thought that was a special place where all the nuts are honey roasted.
Because it was just like this weird, crazy treat.
And they were really hard to open.
But once you got inside and had that honey-roasted flavor, it was a good experience.
No, the honey-roasted peanuts were great back in the day.
Once in a while, you'll get a choice.
Maybe they'll be like bags of chips or pretzels or things.
Granola bar shows up sometimes.
Yeah, the granola bar is a nice one.
But I feel like something again about the unique air and smells of the airplane makes me want something salty sometimes.
I would actually say the same thing.
And I know there are certain planes where they will give you like little cookies.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
But when I look around and see what people are not eating from their meals, often it's the dessert.
People tend to leave dessert.
I mean, they're often like really lousy desserts.
But people do tend to leave them behind more often, it seems like.
So let's talk about longer flights where you're actually getting a quote-unquote meal.
You've recently been on a few trans-Pacific flights, Mark.
So you've had some recent big airplane meals.
What are some of your thoughts here?
One thing I will say is open the main dish immediately and start there.
Because they don't really let anything get that hot on planes, because they're worried there'll be turbulence and it'll spill and burn someone.
Even the coffee never really gets that hot.
So...
Open it immediately because if you want it hot, you're not going to have a long window to do that.
I would also say the cover, because usually it's like aluminum cover that they've heated it.
However, they heat it.
It's keeping in moisture and could make things inside soggy.
So let it breathe and eat it first.
And then in terms of what to choose, you know, sometimes you have a choice.
I would say that sauce-based dishes tend to do best in kind of the airplane sealed meal environment.
So maybe it's a beef stew, a stir fry.
Pasta dishes, those are all pretty safe choices.
Chicken or beef, it really depends on how it's done.
And I have never, ever chosen fish.
And the people that have done it have told me the stories of the regret.
Yeah, I mean I usually would just go vegetarian because it's really going to be gross, no matter what.
Now, some people – we've talked about this before.
Some people use that as a strategy to get possibly a better meal, because typically when you're buying your ticket, they can say do you have any dietary restrictions?
And people will choose vegetarian because they say oh, you're more likely to get something, that's OK.
But I find though, when you get the vegetarian meal, often it's an uninspired pile of steamed veggies, nothing going on, just like the most minimal thing they can possibly offer you.
And so I don't usually go to that.
Now, I will warn our vegetarian friends, sometimes they run out of the veggie meal.
And I have seen people experience the tragedy of that.
And if it's somebody who's not a vegetarian, maybe they'll just take the chicken or the beef.
But if it's someone who is a vegetarian and they can't eat the chicken or beef, they often get like a plate of all the leftover dinner rolls.
I've seen this.
Because basically, the flight attendants have to assemble a meal that's vegetarian out of all the leftovers of other meals.
So that hazard is there.
So if you're a strict vegetarian, certainly choose a vegetarian meal, but have a backup with you.
That's another reason, as I said, why you should bring a sandwich.
Yeah.
Yes, yeah.
Do not get on a plane without your own food.
You just never know what could go wrong.
Another thing you can do when you're getting your ticket is request a kosher meal, even if you're not kosher.
There is a thought out there.
I don't know how true it is, but some people say that you're getting a slightly higher quality of meat if you go with a kosher meal.
I still would lean just to go vegetarian.
Yeah.
But another perk of ordering a special meal is that usually they will serve the special meals first.
First, yeah.
Speaking of other things that you can do when you're buying your ticket.
There was one airline, because you know you have a little drop-down menu, or you know a Mr, a Ms, a Mrs, et cetera.
I think it was British Airways.
Like.
You have those choices, but if you like, keep scrolling.
They have options like Baron and Viscount and like Most Rev and Very Rev General.
So I would say, next time you fly, try like— putting yourself down as an Earl or a Duchess, and maybe you get that extra sack of pretzels.
I don't know.
There are some ways that you can make the, you know, typically bad.
I mean, like it's an easy target airplane food.
It's not usually that good, but there are some things you can do to make it better.
I would say salt, pepper and butter are vital because often the foods are very bland.
That you get out of these things.
And so if you can get extra butter it's intended obviously for the bread, but I will often put it on the rice or put it into the main dish to give it some actual flavor and heft ask for extra pepper because that could that can like that.
You will need this to season and like that.
Now the other thing we talked about, you know.
So maybe it's a longer flight, and there's been a snack cart, drink cart, and then the i don't know the entree cart, the main dish cart, whatever you want to call it save your pretzels or nuts from the snack because you may want to crumble them onto your main dish to add a little texture and make a little different.
So if you do that, your seat mates will be jealous and they will wish they had held on to their nuts.
That's an impressive strategy.
I'm going to have to try that out.
But I have to say that that requires an awful lot of restraint.
I mean, you're sitting there in a chair staring at a bag of peanuts or pretzels.
You're telling me that I'm not supposed to eat it even though I just want to eat it.
That's tough.
I mean, you're asking for a lot of restraint.
Maybe ask for two bags.
Yeah, yeah.
You've never been shy about asking for the bonus bag.
I'll throw one other thing out there is that as far as placement –
If your row is full and you're in coach like most normal people are like that you don't have a lot of room and you're never going to get a really good angle with the food on the tray.
So I always say lift each dish from its compartment with one hand and then eat it from very close to your mouth, because then you're going to have the maximum like food attack mobility and you won't need to really stick out your elbows.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You want you want to be able to do that.
And that's it's the best situation.
Although you will if there's anything you need to pre cut, you'll have to do that beforehand.
Another strategy I will use if you're in the whole meal situation is to use the roll.
The roll is going to be crappy bread.
Other elements of your dish are going to be crappy.
But if you combine them, you could make each less crappy.
Let's say you have a pasta with some junky sauce.
Also, oftentimes you'll get a little wedge of cheese on the side.
Slice the bread in half, put a little sauce in from the meal, and then throw in the wedge of cheese.
And then you have a nice cheese sandwich with a little bit of a condiment.
That's actually pretty good, which I haven't tried yet.
Yeah.
So try to be creative with that roll, and just don't be afraid to mix and match everything on your plate.
I mean, I know that you should be afraid to mix and match at any time in any meal, but especially on the airplane, when you're dealing with really crappy food, you've got to be even more willing to take risks, because you've already taken a risk by putting any of that food in your mouth.
Now, if you have an overnight flight, a red-eye flight, a long-haul flight, you may also be offered breakfast.
And I think the breakfast can be pretty rough.
But you can mitigate some of the problems if you think closely.
If you go for the hot dish, it's almost always going to be like some kind of sci-fi egg-like product made like that.
So I normally say skip that.
One of the other pitfalls would be having cereal, because obviously if you hit a bump or something like that, the milk is going to splash up like that.
I'm actually surprised they offer cereal so often, because it's just not optimized for a plane.
But you can just keep your milk level low.
You can do it, but, like, if you really hit a bump, it's going to go above.
Because, again, these are, like, tiny little bowls like that.
There's not a lot of, you know.
I guess.
I feel like it's rare that I have that much issue with a bump that's that violent on a plane.
I don't know.
It can cause spillage like that.
Maybe, but I think the best thing to go with in that situation is yogurt.
You can always add cereal to it if you want some crunch and it's viscous enough to stay in place.
It's not going to be a problem.
They could do loop-de-loops and yogurt would be fine.
You'd be good.
I guess if they stay inverted for too long.
Yeah, then you've got an issue.
If you're trying to really hot dog it with Iceman or something like that, don't do it in Top Gun.
But the other thing, though, is that fruit can sometimes be a good bet.
And muffins surprisingly sometimes turn out OK on planes.
Because like baked goods and planes, like you don't.
You don't expect excellence or even decency there.
But I've had some pretty good muffins on flights.
Yeah.
Who knew?
Well, I think part of that is because well, this is a separate issue, but there are just too many muffins out there.
I feel like worldwide muffin quality has been plummeting for years.
And because they will often heat it up like a warm muffin just feels like it's such a novelty that it's automatically better than the average muffin just because it's warm.
Yeah.
All right.
Until next time, I'm Mark Garrison.
And I'm Dan Pashman reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcast.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
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Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
