SEA-ATL - 1 Oct 2022 - DL Whatever It Was I Am Too Lazy To Look It Up It Was The Midday One Operated By A Latam A350
I went with the Hempler's Chicken Salad. It was... fine? Almost entirely huge chunks of meat, although fully chilled, so keep that in mind. It wasn't really what I'd describe as a 'salad', although it fits the technical definition: there were basically no greens in the bowl; what you see here is what the whole dish was, there's no layer hiding underneath. The colored carrots stained the chicken, making it look a little odd, but that's easy to ignore. Fruit salad was very, very lemony; we idly debated raiding it for the lemon zest and blueberries to make a cocktail. The blueberries were also not stemmed - talk about minor nits to pick, but still, come on folks.
The gentleman across from me got the Fennel Flan Croquettes, which were being sold by flight attendants as "the warm chicken croquettes"...... either they had a change of heart and changed the recipe since preordering opened, or there was some honest confusion (most likely), or the F/A was just trying to 'sell' an unappetizing option by calling it chicken. Whatever was going on, the dish looked exactly as "fabulous" as I thought it would; here's a creepshot of it (keep in mind he had partially consumed it when I took this photo, so the original plating was slightly less tragic - but only slightly).
The consumed dishes I saw going back to the galley were about 50/50 between practically untouched and clean plate club, so seems likely to be one of those polarizing choices. This flight was a fiasco of drunk Alaska cruise passengers and Hawaii vacationers returning to wherever on the East Coast from whence they spawned, so I wouldn't necessarily assume the cabin's palate was particularly refined.
My real inflight meal was, of course, supplied by Beecher's, because I've learned if I want a good meal these days it's best to just bring your own.
By the way, some snack basket and drink rotations have happened for October. A new pink shortbread is in the basket, apparently replacing Cubetti, and it's fabulous - do not sleep on these. And the pink rose is back from Une Femme, this time in cans. It appears to be displacing normal sparkling wine for October, so mimosas may be a challenge for the next few weeks.
Delta has also managed to convince Frito Lay to make the world's tiniest bags of Sunchips, with size-reduced chips inside. It's a 70 calorie pack, and surprisingly satisfying as the chips are smaller so there are more bites to take.
