Seat 2A

Date of flight: March 24, 2015
Route flown: Bellingham to Honolulu
Class of service: First
Length of flight: 5:58
Meal served: Dinner
PDB Offered: Water bottle at seat and choice of Mai Tai or Guava Juice

Appetizer: Warm Potato Salad atop Fresh Baby Spinach, Green Onion, Beecher’s Flagship Crumbles. Served with Warm Hawaiian Sweet Roll

Entrée Choices:

Trident Alaska Cod with Black Bean Sauce
Steamed Calrose Rice, Yu Choy
or
Kalbi Beef Ribs in a Korean Barbecue Sauce
Wasabi Mashed Potato, Bok Choy with Sesame Seeds

Dessert: Chuckanut Ginger Pear Cheesecake

Comment: The meals for this BLI-HNL flight are catered out of Las Vegas and according to our FA the caterers were (and have been for some time) a bit sloppy. The potato salad had no dressing, and so consisted of cold potato wedges sitting atop a pile of spinach. Nothing special. I used the salt and pepper on the potatoes. The "Warm Hawaiian Sweet Roll" was actually a 10¢ soft white dinner roll. Overall, lousy as appetizers on a Hawaii flight go. The Beef Ribs were not ribs at all but two pieces of meat that looked more like flank steak. It was a decent portion but the barbecue sauce was so inconsequential in flavor that it may well have been applied with an atomizer. Our FA apologized that the dessert was not as advertised - it tasted more like butterscotch - but overall I thought it was tasty enough. Overall, the FA's great service made up for any catering shortcomings but it is a shame to see Alaska try to provide a good meal and then have it diminished by shoddy catering. It's also worth noting that not one single person in rows 1 or 2 selected the cod. Neither did the two guys behind me.