My Meal of the Week feature examines an airline meal from my travels over the years. This may be a meal from earlier in the week or it may be a meal served over a decade ago.
Although unsightly, I found United Airlines’ take on a green chili frittata to be satisfying on a recent flight.
Green Chili Frittata – Domestic First Class Breakfast On United Airlines
Ahead of a recent early morning flight on United Airlines, I received an email inviting me to pre-order my breakfast. I was pleased to see five choices and hope that this pre-order system will soon be available on all United flights…not just domestic narrow-body flights.
Although I thought the breakfast frittata was both hearty and delicious (minus the “cheddar cheese sauce”), I ordered the green chili frittata on my recent United flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Denver (DEN) which was described as:
Green chili frittata
Green chile (sic) frittata with cumin roasted cherry tomatoes and finished with salsa verde and queso fresco.
Green chilis. Check. Cherry tomatoes. Check. Salsa verde. Check. Queso Fresco. Check.
I love all these ingredients. It’s a great mix. But how would it taste?
The flight attendant serving breakfast was surly onboard. No greeting. No smile. No, “Good morning Mr. Klint. Thank you for being a 1K flyer. We’re pleased to welcome you onboard and have catered your pre-reserved breakfast this morning.” Instead just a sullen face and five words:
“We have your pre-order.”
Ok. Great.
He soon delivered a frittata…but it was the wrong one – the “regular” one and not hte green chili one. I told him this is not what I ordered and he said, “That’s the frittata.” I responded that I ordered the green chili version. In a huff he took the tray black. Moments later without a word he brought the correct dish:
Let’s just say it was not very beautiful and quite a small portion. At the same time, I like those “Southwest” tastes and thought the breakfast was reasonable (reasonable enough that I would order it again).
CONCLUSION
While the “breakfast frittata” provides a much larger helping of food, I liked the ingredients and taste of the green chili frittata better. In terms of United’s current catering line-up, you should consider yourself fortunate if you are offered either one (versus some of the other stuff currently being served onboard).
While I have had great FAs on UA, it seems more than not I encounter surly FAs when flying The Friendly Skies.
A number of years ago now (pre-merger), I was sitting next to a woman in UA International Business class. Of course menus were not boarded, so the woman in the window seat asked the FA how the beef is prepared because she didn’t have a menu to find out herself.
The FA responds, “it is cooked, now do you want it or not”. I could not control myself and let out a small chuckle before the woman says, I will have the beef.
There is something about UA which seems to attract surly FAs, I mainly fly DL and it seems very rare to find a surly DL FA.
That looks like someone vomited in the dish. Disgusting like most of the “food” United serves.
In this case it is queso fresco. If you know the ingredients, it’s not so bad.
Queso fresco is not a melty type of cheese. Perhaps it was liquid from the tomatoes? Anyway it was a colorful meal!
It looks literally like vomit
That has got to me the smallest croissant I’ve ever had; cutting costs too much !
Geez!!! What is all that liquid around it? Disgusting. I prefer tho fast.
Green chile is spelled with an “e”, Matt.
It can be. Doesn’t have to be.
Seems even United is unsure..in the mobile app screenshot from Matthew they spell it both ways
That is disgusting.
If they could even remotely come close to the photographed selections..
I’ll have the frittata with a side order of attitude. On a positive note, I received my 2,500 PQD bonus.
Looks like there was more food in the fruit bowl than in the main plate.
Matt, I couldn’t help but laugh at the way you wrote what is supposed or expected to be the professional greeting from the FA “Good Morning Mr Klint…” As if!!! But one can dream, no question about it.
The F/A has probably been reading too many comments on this and other sites and decided why bother. I’m starting to feel that way myself. I’ve done a great job my whole career and until social media reared it’s ugly head I didn’t understand that most people would prefer I do a crappy job so they can complain about it.
On the contrary, I sent compliment letters for great service at very chance I get. If you are good at your job then you can disregard the comments about bad service seeing they don’t apply to you and sleep well at night.
Matthew you should fill out the survey they send after the flight when you have these type of experiences with FAs. Believe it or not, they actually do look at these and can pull together data if lots of people are giving a certain crew a bad review.
I legit laughed out loud when I saw your photo, because as nauseating as this is, when I got served this in late December it looked even worse! The FA placed it down in front of me and walked away, I took a look at it, stared at it a further few seconds and hit the call button. He comes back, “oh yeah that’s awful, Denver catering has been terrible” and told me he’d give me a ETC- which he did, very generous one in fact- and then gave me the regular frittata. He also photographed it for submission to corporate. I did joke with him though about would he have been impressed if I actually consumed it. I mean it’s just awful, I didn’t make a deal whatsoever that it was served to me looking like that, but it was perhaps the most putrid looking meal I’ve ever been given on a plane.
Glad to see it wasn’t just me. In theory it should be delicious but the way it’s made it has to be the nastiest thing United’s offered in a while.