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.
Good morning. I thought we’d start out the day with a look back at breakfast on my United Airlines flight Chicago to London earlier this month. What does Polaris breakfast look like on United Airlines in 2021?
2021 Polaris Breakfast On United Airlines
Since the pandemic reached critical mass in March 2020, United has served a sandwich for its pre-arrival meal in longhaul business class…the sort of sandwich that led to complaints like this on FlyerTalk:
Breakfast was an egg-white cheese sandwich I guess. It was terrible. I don’t understand why they had to cut the breakfast/pre-arrival meals to this. I would have been perfectly fine with a cereal, yogurt, and fruit–all of which are pre-packaged or sealed anyways.
Starting this month, United improved the pre-arrival breakfast meals and now offers passengers two hot choices. On my flight, the choices were:
- Quiche leek cheese tortilla cup, smokey tomato sauce, chicken apple sausage, mushroom
- French Toast with vanilla sauce
Both were served with a croissant, yogurt, and fruit cup.
I nearly had the cabin to myself, so unsurprisingly I “chose” both options for breakfast (note, the cabin was thankfully not catered full, but there were a couple of each breakfast choice loaded).
Both meals were delicious. Really, really tasty. The quiche served in the edible tortilla shell had a nice spice to it (and the salsa helped further) and I also far prefer chicken sausage to pork sausage.
But what really surprised me was the French Toast. It was light, buttery, clearly had enough eggs so that it did not just taste like a sweet piece of bread, and the warm vanilla sauce was oh so much better than even pure maple syrup.
Even better news for longhaul business class passengers: starting on March 1, 2021, United will bring back hot, fresh croissants (the pre-pandemic ones) versus the individually packaged croissants served at room temperature.
Hopefully we will see this return on domestic flights as well sooner rather than later.
Nicely done, United. A big improvement and tasty way to start my day.
Matthew, isn’t that the same French toast that was on P.S. flights a decade ago? Have had that a few times when I wanted a break from savory.
It’s the same. But much better with vanilla sauce than “breakfast syrup.”
… and it’s a shame we currently can’t heat up the individual pre-packaged croissants, as the vendor bags’ are not oven-safe. … but glad they’re bringing them back to heat up next month.
I had both on a recent LAX-EWR transcon and I enjoyed both. So whenever possible I would ask for both
The offerings of the soon to be, “World’s Number One Airline.” 🙂
I can’t think of anywhere I am regularly served or offered a quiche other than on airplanes.
My economy croissants were usually chilled, Polaris must have it nice if it was room temperature.
Any word if the cinnamon rolls are coming back?
I’d prefer cold but butter croissants to stale packaged one at room temperature!
Both of these meals look delightful. As I commented on Twitter, the tortilla cup is a fun touch that helps to reduce waste and is probably tasty in its own way. The mushrooms are probably quite welcome for British travelers. The silliest factor for me is the french toast served with a croissant! I’d rather have some of that chicken sausage with the french toast than more bread.
Pre-packaged croissants are an abomination, regardless of which airline is serving them. They’re tough, ‘doughy’, flavourless and thoroughly horrid. It’s a classic case of how it’s better not to include them at all when they’re so inferior ( and bearing no resemblance) to the real thing.
I agree… if it was up to me, I’d prefer not serve a dam piece of bread on board. Bread is bread… and it’s not quite the same served at 35K feet as opposed to a nice restaurant… especially in this day, where the majority of pax pass on the carbs and are more healthy-minded.
Am I the only one that’s slightly peeved off by the prepackaged fruit cup? It just seems cheap and extremely artificial, or at least it did so on my flight last week. Give me a wrapped (or unwrapped) apple or orange any day, like the United Club in ORD does.
Agreed. I don’t eat the fruit cup (or the sugary yogurt). How can a small bowl of fresh fruit break the budget? It was always my favorite part of the breakfast.