Food

Restaurant month at airports

May 3, 2016Harriet BaskasAirports, FoodAirport food, Restaurant Month

If you enjoy Restaurant Month deals in your home town, then you’ll be pleased to know that HMSHost is once again bringing the concept to airports.

Through May, HMSHost is hosting Airport Restaurant Month in about 90 participating restaurants at more than 50 airports across North America and Europe, including those operated by HMSHost’s parent company, Autogrill, at Brussels Airport, Zürich Airport, and Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport in Rome.

During restaurant month in my town, each restaurant creates their own special menu to highlight their offerings.

For HMSHost’s Airport Month, each restaurant is customizing a core menu of dishes created by HMSHost’s corporate executive chef and culinary team.

Guests will receive a choice of entrée, accompanied by several side dishes. Some of the dishes travelers will find include Rosemary grilled shrimp; flat iron steak; Parmesan-crusted chicken; and a baked Portobello mushroom.

You can see the full list of participating restaurants at AirportRestaurantMonth.com.

United adds Garrett Popcorn to the menu

May 1, 2016Harriet BaskasFoodAirline food, Garrett Popcorn, United Airlines

If you’re a big fan of popcorn in any form and trying out locally-themed treats on the road, then you’ll be pleased to learn that United Airlines has added snack-sized bags of Garrett Popcorn to its by-on-board menu.

If you’ve ever traveled through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, you’ve seen – and perhaps bought a bag, or three, of Garrett Popcorn.

And then gone back for more.

Now, if you don’t have time to buy the popcorn at the airport, you can buy a small bag of Garrett Mix -(CheeseCorn and CaramelCrisp) on flights longer than two hours. Price. $3.99

United is also adding a kid-friendly snack box to its by-on-board menu. The Ben Flyin Snack Box will have a turkey stick, animal crackers, apple sauce, a game (Wikki Stix) – but no popcorn.

Help fund a film about airline food

April 15, 2016Harriet BaskasFoodAirline food, food

If you’ve ever been curious about the food offered to passengers on planes, you may be interested in throwing in a few bucks to help out the folks over at inflightfeed, who not only love eating and reviewing airplane food, they’re got a Kickstarter campaign going to fund a film on the topic.

Their goal: $74,049.

So far, just over $2000 has been raised. But they’re early in the process and, well, who wouldn’t want to see what inflightfeed founder Nikos Loukas describe as “a very cool airline food documentary around the globe about Qantas, Air France, Turkish, Cathay, Air Baltic plus quite a few more airlines.”

The project sounds tasty: “We will have wine tastings, food tastings, and first class cabin mock up experiences,” said Loukas.

As Kickstarter projects go, there’s a long list of perks being offered for folks who pledge at various levels, including the opportunity to be a taste tester on the set.

Yum!

United perks up its coffee offering

April 7, 2016Harriet BaskasFoodairline coffee, illy coffee

If you’ve been disappointed with the quality of the coffee being served on your United Airlines flights, get ready for a tasty jolt of something far better.

As announced last November, United is bringing on board coffee from Italian roaster illy – starting in July.

Coffee is so important to so many people that United has not only gone to Italy to get the new coffee, in preparation for the July roll out the carrier sent a team of managers to illy’s intensive University of Coffee at the Culinary Institute of America’s campus in St. Helena, California to learn just what goes into growing, roasting and preparing great coffee.

I tagged along and, during the highly-caffeinated course (at one point I had to go walk off the buzz) students conducted many tastings and learned about everything from the “discovery” of coffee to how coffee is best cultivated, harvested, processed, roasted, stored, ground and — of course — brewed. Grounds covered included the many variables that can affect the taste and quality of coffee, how to make a perfect espresso and how to add foam art to espresso-based drinks.

Take a look at my USA TODAY story about how United’s newly minted Coffee Experts will spread the word.

Airport eating: cage-free eggs

March 14, 2016Harriet BaskasFoodAirport food, HMSHost

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationaalarchief/5453358048/in/photolist-85EtNz-7DP1K8-orRxeq-9iTTmC-6eRUN6-ocqfjj-6EwyUK-5q8AnP-81sAiw-5zuozU-4juzPa-od5jMw-xC8MpK-oePmJf-oeMR2k-oePmtq-tAHX1V-4juMxR-bAdBKQ-bP8goV-i5n2qu-ag1M1o-otFnwA-owjX2w-obYVtJ

Photo courtesy: Nationaal Archief via Flickr Commons

HMSHost – operator of many of the airport restaurants you already frequent – has announced that it has plans to switch to “cage-free” eggs at its more than 2,000 airport and highway locations.

They’ll start off by making the switch in early summer at several HMSHost restaurants at Los Angeles International Airport, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, and McCarran International Airport Las Vegas.

By June you’ll be served cage-free eggs at Tuscany Café, Goose Island, and Tortas Frontera (already serving cage-free eggs) at Chicago O’Hare International Airport; Gladstones and Campanile at Los Angeles International Airport; HMSHost’s restaurant 1897 Market at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and PGA TOUR Grill and Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill at McCarran International Airport Las Vegas.

Cage-free eggs will show up on the menu at all the company’s restaurants by 2025.

No doubt there are other airport restaurants already serving cage-free eggs, but it’s good to know HMSHost is joining the flock.

Travel Tidbits from Phoenix and O’Hare Airports

March 11, 2016Harriet BaskasArt, Events, FoodAirport art, Airport food, cook-off, cooking demonstrations

Fresh art at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

Giant wood sculptures by Phoenix artist Mitch Fry, made from a multitude of small pieces, are now on display in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as part of the Phoenix Airport Museum’s exhibition titled, Form Matters.

Look for this exhibition in Terminal 4 in the Gallery on level 3 through July 10. (Hours: 6 a.m. – 9 p.m. daily.)

Something’s cooking at Chicago O’Hare Airport

The second annual Channel Your Inner Chef cooking competition take place March 22 in front of a live audience inside Terminal 2 at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

Hosted by HMSHost and the Chicago Department of Aviation, the competition pits five finalists against each other in a 30-minute timed cook-off with the challenge of creating an original recipe from a bounty of ingredients revealed to them only at the start of the event.

Top prize is the chance for the winning chef to have his or her dish featured on the menu of an HMSHost-operated restaurant at O’Hare, two round-trip airline tickets for a flight within the continental U.S. and a VIP trip for two to attend the James Beard Awards Gala on May 2, 2016 in Chicago.

The cook-off will be held post-security in O’Hare’s Terminal 2 and will also feature live music and a secondary stage with cooking demonstrations and sample dishes from HMSHost-operated restaurants at O’Hare.

Those free snacks on United

January 30, 2016Harriet BaskasFood

United Airlines announced back in December that it would be bringing complimentary snacks back to the economy cabin in February 2016.

Beginning Monday those snacks will finally take the skies.

Here’s what will be on the complimentary menu on flights within North America and Latin America:

On flights departing before 9:45 a.m.: stroopwafel – a Dutch, caramel-filled waffle that warms up nicely if you set it on top of your coffee.

On flights departing after 9:45 a.m. : packaged snacks, such as an Asian-style snack mix of rice crackers, sesame sticks and wasabi peas or a zesty-ranch mix of mini pretzel sticks, Cajun corn sticks and ranch soy nuts.

Airports help out local food banks

January 8, 2016Harriet BaskasFoodAirport food, food banks, hunger relief

The upside of modern airports offering a wide variety of fast food outlets, grab ‘n’ go shops and table service restaurants with gourmet meals is that passengers have lots of options when they’re hungry.

The downside: A lot of unsold food can go to waste.

The silver lining: In many cities there are programs that make it easy to get unsold packaged and prepared food from airports to local food banks and other hunger relief programs.

Denver International is the latest airport to put a food donation program in place.

In a program officially launched this week, participating airport restaurants and food vendors fill coolers on loan from United Airlines with leftover prepared entrees, side dishes, prepackaged salads and sandwiches, sealed beverages, condiment packets, canned goods and other items.

A local organization, Metro Caring, then picks up the food and distributes it to hungry families and individuals in town.

During a two-month pilot phase of the program at DIA, 11 airport concessions donated about 3,500 pounds of unused food to the program.

Other airports with food donation programs include Los Angeles International Airport, which has its LAX Harvest Food Donation program, Portland International, which has donated 90 tons of food (over 120,000 meals) since February 2013 through its partnership with Urban Gleaners, the Port of Portland reports, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which has donated 155,000 pounds of food to a local since starting a program in 2006.

Many national airport concession operators donate to local food banks at well. HMSHost, for example, gives excess food products to local banks in 55 airports, including Tampa International.

(My story about food donation programs at airports first appeared on USA TODAY)

British Airways ready for Christmas

December 15, 2015Harriet BaskasFood, Holidaysairline meals, British Airways, Christmas, Christmas dinner

British Airways is gearing up for an onslaught of holiday travelers and is preparing some treats for those who fly on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The airline will be serving a traditional British Christmas dinner to most passengers, consisting of sliced roast turkey breast, chestnut (available in First and Club World) or sage and onion (available in World Traveller) stuffing, cranberry compote, brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, carrot batons, mince pies, as well as other holiday favorites.

During those two days on flights departing from U.S. gateways alone, British Airways expects to serve:

*More than 294 turkeys;
*150 pounds of stuffing;
*1,029 sweet potatoes;
*1,283 brussels sprouts;
*234 parsnips;
*12 gallons of gravy;
*and 1,820 mince pies.

Other airlines also have holiday treats in store for passengers and, as we get them, we’ll be posting here and on Twitter as well.

Snack Saturday: sampling from Nuts.com

November 28, 2015Harriet BaskasFood, Snack SaturdayNuts.com, popcorn

The folks at Nuts.com sent me an email asking if I’d be interested in sampling some of their products for tastiness and portability for traveling.

It was mid-afternoon, I was hungry, so I said “Sure. Surprise me with some samples.”

The very next day a box with Chia Chips, Sea Salt and Vinegar Kale Chips and Half Popped Popcorn (way better than it sounds) showed up at the house.

The resealable bags would definitely make these and many of the other healthy treats in the Nuts.com line-up a good candidate for snacking on at the airport and on board a plane.

And while I’d like to show you what the treats look like outside of those pretty yellow bags, unfortunately they’ve, um… already disappeared.