Each week, 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.
If you remember back to elementary school math class, you’ll remember that when talking numbers, mode is the the value that occurs most frequently in a given set of data. For this week’s Meal of the Week, we take a look at my “mode” airline meal.
My “Mode” Airline Meal…
It’s on United of course, the airline I fly more than all others combined…even Lufthansa. And it’s a premium cabin breakfast dish. Any historic frequent flyer on United will recognize this ubiquitous meal, served on both domestic and international routes from about 2010 to 2015 on United and even before that on Continental Airlines.
It included:
- Eggs (cheese omelet or scrambled)
- Cheesy potato wedge (sometimes with broccoli inside, sometimes not)
- Sausage puck (plus ham slice in the Continental days)
- Cherry tomato (cooked)
- Fruit (sliced fruit in a bowl)
- Yogurt (strained yogurt in a bowl until 2014, then a plastic container)
- Bread (cinnamon roll or croissant)
It was served on most domestic breakfast flights longer than 2.5 hours and as the pre-arrival breakfast meal on eastbound flights to Europe or westbound flights to Asia…even in first class!
Looking back through my airline meal library, I’ve had this breakfast no less than 60 times over the years. Here’s just a sampling of photos I took, with the added benefit of being able to see how mobile phone camera technology greatly improved between 201o and 2015:
I would not have ordered this over and over again if I did not like it. It was not a healthy meal nor was it a high-quality meal, but it was a delicious meal…something I looked forward to over and over and over again. When United “retired” the cheesy potato wedge in late 2015, I shed a tear. Thankfully, I have many happy memories…
What is your “mode” airline meal?
As the picture quality gets better the presentation seems to get worse. I remember in GlobalFirst when the FA would set your tray and neatly put down all silverware.
Those were the days!
I had not noticed it but after reading your comment I do realize that presentation in fact has worsen over the years 🙁
The presentation but also the budget. UA actually serving yogurt in a bowl. And cinnamon rolls being served as well.
Bring back Chef Siggi’s ‘classic’ breakfast as a pre order option.
Northwest also had a consistently reliable breakfast but not as good as this one with that potato wedge and the cinnamon roll.
Breakfasts on our biz class trips to/from Europe and Hawaii on United, AA and Lufthansa have mostly been a great big bust. Dinner I always order the short ribs if offered. They’re hard to screw up and usually are pretty good.
If the photos are in chronological order, the cinnamon roll perfectly encapsulates the quality degradation over the years.
That breakfast and presentation was generally better that what’s been on offer since. Anyone remember the days when they offered you a bakery basket for breakfast in business that included warm cinnamon rolls?
This has to be one of the most subtle yet massive flexes in the airline blogging industry. Bravo, Matthew. Your move, Josh Cahill.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Funny, I seem to remember that exact same meal in CO BusinessFirst going from DEL to EWR in 2007-ish.