ICN-ATL - February 2019 - Delta One

The catering on this flight was... pretty hideously terrible. The starters were okay - the salad was salad, the lonely shrimp was the same as every other J flight ever, and actually the onion soup was pretty good. But the entree..... yikes.

I preordered the fish for the main meal service based on the strength of that entree on the outbound, and knew I’d made tragic mistakes as soon as I could smell a fishy fish-market smell permeating the cabin when the ovens were turned on. I barely touched it, to the point where the crew noticed and asked if they could offer me anything else. If I hadn’t eaten well during my layover in Seoul, I might have debated asking for an economy meal instead... this was unquestionably the worst entree I’ve ever been served by Delta, and that’s saying something.

Everything was bad: the fish was oily and had an off putting taste, the sauce added an additional oiliness that was unpleasant, the herbed rice had a curiously astringent aroma, and the asparagus was woody and limp. Uh, I guess the carrots were fine? They were the only part of the meal I actually finished.

In comparison, the Korean meal my wife had was a far better strategy, although still not good by any means. It was advertised as “bibimbap”, and while that was maybe the intent, it was again served without gochujang and in a bowl that didn’t have nearly enough room to combine the elements. The end result was a cold beef salad with a side of rice and soup. Which was fine, but not something I’d go out of my way to preorder compared to OZ/KE’s comparatively delicious takes on the dish. Actually, DL used to get this right as recently as a year or two ago, so something’s changed, and not for the better.

At least dessert was good, and I was able to score double choices - which went a long way towards erasing the memories of the entree.

Midflight meal was fine - your usual sandwich with overly crisp bread from the reheating process. It was a fairly substantial portion, which was nice since I essentially skipped dinner. Probably the element, other the starters, that I enjoyed the most on the flight.

Prearrival Korean meal was fine, but not something I’d choose again - on the oily side and the rice was way over cooked to the point of being crispy. The cereal was as expected, unremarkable but a safe choice.