Well, I guess I'll be a guinea pig for this, then
I'm flying CLT-FRA tonight and decided to try out the DineFresh meal. (Since I'm on work, and there's not One Flew South like in ATL, I figure I'm not necessarily missing out on much by trying it out.) I'll let the folks know when I find out, and I'm going to try to be fair in my comments.
--Comments--
Well, I'll admit that it was a step up from the standard meal (based on the appearance of my seatmate's meal), but it wasn't worth the $20. Presentation was pretty decent overall, but that was probably the best part. It's worth mentioning that I tend to prefer very full flavors, so Indian dishes, Thai Dishes, and well-seasoned Italian dishes are among my favorites.
I had the vegetarian option, which consists of a caprese salad, baba/hummus, tortellini, and cheesecake. The caprese salad, which had some wilted basil, simply had no flavor - not much salt. I liked the baba/hummus - well-seasoned, although it didn't taste especially "fresh." The tortellini portion was quite small compared to what I might have expected for an entree (the salad and dessert were comparatively large) and again lacked seasoning (I couldn't taste the sun-dried tomatoes that were supposedly there), and the cheesecake felt grainy (lacked good texture) and one-dimensional.
If this was a complementary coach meal, I would have been happy (although I would have preferred a smaller slice of cheesecake and a little more fruit, as well as more seasoning). That said, in terms of taste, I preferred meals from Emirates and Air India that I've had in coach (for free). If it shows my expectations are skewed, so be it - but I'd expect at least (and probably better than) the quality of an international coach meal if I'm paying $15-20 (while I had the wine, I certainly could have gone with water and been just as happy.)
If you have any questions, please let me know and I'll follow up the best that I can.
PS - To respond to the above poster, neither the tomatoes nor cheese were frozen, which is a big plus.