The "What Will Alaska Be Serving In First Class On Your Flight?" DISCUSSION (2014)
 

What did you think of your food during your last First Class flight? Was it hot enough, arrived timely, or simply amazing?

If you have a report please post in this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...4-edition.html

Nearly anything else is fair game here ;)

Please note that discussion may seem to jump here as Off Topic discussion in the Reports thread that gets relocated here.

We have an archive of previous threads:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...on-thread.html

Except that fair game is unlikely to ever be served on an AS flight, despite the prospective mouthwatering meal descriptions on the website. :p

DCA-PDX on 1/1 and PDX-OGG on 1/2
 

This was our first long-haul trip on AS. My wife and I were on paid F tickets, which weren't all that much more than DL wanted for an L class ticket on a DCA-ATL-LAX-OGG and return itinerary.

On the DCA-PDX segment on 1/1/14 departing in the 5 pm hour, the first course was a salad comprising mostly of watermelon chunks and arugula. The entree was a choice of Alaska cod in a lemon sauce with Yukon gold roast potatoes and chopped broccoli or cheese ravioli. The dessert was a peach parfait. I didn't drink wine on the flight so I can't comment on the wine choices. I did drink a few Alaskan Ambers, which I rate as one of the best beers I've ever drank on an airliner.

On the PDX-OGG segment on 1/2/14 departing in the 11 am hour, catering put breakfast menus and lunch food on board. The first course was a mixed green salad with pieces of an orange colored tropical fruit, macadamia nuts and feta cheese (which was quite good). The entrees were either a chicken with curry sauce plate (which ran out before the FA reached us in row 4) or boneless kalbi beef rib pieces in a teriyaki-type sauce with white rice and an oriental vegetable (possibly bok choy). My wife thought the beef was tough but I thought it was really delicious. I cleaned my plate.:)

The dessert was a cup of a creme with chocolate and coconut flavors; this was very nice.

As far as beverages are concerned, I tried a Kona Longboard lager in the PDX Board Room along with my pancakes out of the awesome pancake making machine. On board, I had a couple of bloody marys (AS uses a different mix than DL's Mr. & Mrs. T) which I thought were really enhanced by the Sun Liquor vodka. I'm not a cognac drinker, but AS has cognac on board (I don't think DL does). After lunch, I tried the Crater Lake espresso vodka on the rocks, which I though blew Kahlua away. About an hour from landing mai tais were served in both cabins; my wife really liked hers. AS put a big chunk of fresh pineapple and a maraschino cherry on the drink skewers in F, and the pineapple dipped in the mai tai was an incredible taste.

My wife had the POG juice as her PDB, which she found "drinkable but not delicious".

The breakfast menus indicated that, if we had gone on an early morning departure, our entree choices would have been an omelet with shredded pork and rice or "our version of a moco loco" (scrambled eggs, low fat beef patty with sweet onions and pan gravy).

We really liked the way we were treated on AS; if we can't get the tickets we want on DL for long-haul Pacific coast destinations, we won't hesitate to book AS. I really, really hope DL does not acquire AS.

A work colleague of mine mentioned to me she's requested one of the BOB offerings in F for free after all C has been offered, is this standard? I seem to remember reading it somewhere on FT as well but can't find it now.

I typically am still hungry even if the F food is edible, so being able to request a BOB for free even if it's later in the flight would be great.

you can request one of the fresh buy on board items for free after the first pass through in Coach. The picnic packs and beef jerky are not available, but the fresh items are.

Thanks, good to know. Now I can stop shoveling so many protein bars from home in my bag.

The last time I was upgraded to F was in October, from SEA to LAX, en route to South Korea. The breakfast was bad - scrambled eggs, overcooked black beans, orange slice, semi-hard tortilla and container of salsa. Here's hoping AS discontinues this option b/c I've had better breakfasts.

Ahhh, the classic Huevos Rancheros. Terrible meal.

It was an interesting attempt at something different.

Did they include a packet of Cholula? I remember seeing some somewhere....

It was a packet of salsa as far as I remember. Like the kind you get at Taco Bell.

Would this meal have been good had the cooking conditions been more ideal? That is to say - is it a meal that is not perhaps well suited for being reheated in an aircraft oven? Or was it overcooked due to inattention or negligence from the flight attendant?

In concept, black beans and scrambled eggs don't sound all that bad, especially if you add some cheese and salsa. However, if the airplane ovens are the problem, you'd think that chefs who were hired to design meals to be served in airliners would have run an meal like this through the airplane ovens to see how it turned out before signing off on it for regular production. At least, if it were me running the kitchen, this would seem a logical approach.

On the other hand, if the problem is flight attendants who are possibly unwilling, unable or untrained to take the time to monitor the cooking process, then some of these meals are doomed from the start.

A good inflight meal is a team effort. I hope that everyone from the chefs to the flight attendants are on the same page.

Or, from an oven that is not cooking to specs, or from an oven where, due to unforeseen circumstances, has the food in longer than designed (even if the oven has turned off), i.e., passenger needs extended attention, turbulence requiring FA seating, etc.

The last couple times I've flown Coach, they've run out of the fresh option a little over half way through the aircraft, so don't plan on getting one if your in F.

What I would like to know is why they don't publish the F class options on-line so I can decide up front if I need to brown bag.

That is a good point, and since the menu rotations are known months in advance, something easily "doable." (The exception might be the snack flights, i.e., SFO/SEA, where there tend to be a random rotation of items within a particular menu period.)

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

First meals are published online on the employee site. It would be nice to see this published on the public one as well ^