Is there a more vile and disgusting meal served in F than the beef tips? I can honestly say that people would turn that crap down in a soup kitchen. (and I know, I worked in one once for 3 months) On my EWR-LAS flight last week, I was in row 4 of a 738 and of course all they had left were the beef tips. Seeing as how I was starving, I decided to give it a shot for a second time. Whats funny is they now try to fancy it up with some iridescent yellow mustard-y sauce. Its honestly awful. Inedible. The chef who came up with that recipe isn't even qualified to work at a dump like the Olive Garden or any of the Landrys restaurants. The beef tips have got to go...

As I never count on an upgrade I always bring my own food from Panera's. A nice salad or sandwich. I would actually stick with that even if I got in F. What passes for "sauce" on any of the pasta dishes is awful....

Cheers

I do agree on the beef; it's not up to par. I too hope that the food gets an upgrade.

Luckily I have not been on a flight that has beef tips as an option. Has CO implemented any of the sample dishes they tested at the last DO or were those only for BF routes?

i think the concept that CO has a relatively nice service product in F and Y is great, but i think their actual food sucks. especially considering the fact that they own their own caterers.

their soups are good, but the sandwiches are nasty. no matter what it is, they all taste the same.

it sounds the mid con meals are crap also. i fly everywhere from iah, so I am mainly subject to the soup and sandwich for lunch and dinner.

they need to start serving real meals. decent ones that are easy to reheat and that do not cost any more than soup and sandwiches. there are a lot of dishes that taste better reheated then when served fresh.

I also had the beef tips about 2 weeks ago on EWR-LAS. Pretty nasty, especially since it was described as "beef tenderloin". More like beef jerky. No, that gives jerky a bad name. They really need to do better.

It was described as asian-style beef tips on the EWR-AUS flight last night. Makes me happy I chose the salmon salad, seeing the opinions here.

The food I was service on a 6 hour international flight in F EWR SJD in March was ridiculous. I mean, who thinks of this stuff?? It was awful. Denny's would have done MUCH better. It's not hard to create good, reheatable food. They are not doing it. The catering out of Mexico was appalling. I ate because I was starved. If I had a child, I would never permit them to eat the stuff out of mexico. The colors alone of the sauce I got were vile looking.

I would LOVE to know if the CO executives would EVER choose those meals to be their meals.

I guess I must be weird but I actually enjoy the beef tips but, I actually like airline food.

Dan

I've had the beef tips about five times in the last year. A couple of times they were actually very good. The others I would say they were just edible. But considering my home airport is IAH, I see the sandwich and soup/salad and soup meals more than anything else.

I miss some of the old dinner choices. I had a very good salmon dish several times back in 2000 and 2001, along with a pretty good lasagna once around that time. And I really miss the salads as a side item instead of soup. The soup is always very good, but sometimes the combinations of soup and entr�e are really strange.

At the very least, they need to put some variety back in the menu. The beef tips have been on every dinner flight I've flown in first in the last 18 months that was over 2.5 hours, with the exception of IAH-LGW in BF and an EWR-PDX transcon.

It is, unfortunately, another example of the degradation in service under the leadership of Larry Kellner.

I'm not saying that Gordon Bethune wouldn't have cut costs, had he been faced with a similar economic climate. But he would have cut costs in a way that still made the customer feel good about the product.

Kellner is an accountant. He just looks at the bottom line. "Order the beef jerky, it will save on our food costs." Then his head of marketing, knowing it's a terrible idea, has to package it as "beef tips" so that it won't conflict with CO's whole shtick about how they do so much more for their customers.

Not only is the customer getting a sub-standard product, but he/she is being mislead by CO's aggressive marketing campaign about the superior quality of their product.

I've had the beef tips, sometimes they are good, sometimes they are too salty. One time I got beef tips instead of a steak on a transcon, and I was not a happy camper about that....

one should be realistic about the food: it doesn't have to be super fancy, but it should be at least as good as the stuff you can get in the concourse.

Agreed, but it's not, and that's the problem. Especially on EWR-LAS, which is practically a transcon, F fares are almost as high, and there are more and more business travelers going to LAS these days (though I don't know if that actually translates into a higher % of paid F pax in the front cabin on this route, but I do see that availability can be very limited more than 5 days out, before EUA).

I would rather eat the cheeseburger from Y than the beef-tips in F. Lets face it: The quality of food in (domestic) F on CO sucks. There is no getting around that. The soups are good, but keep in mind if you add enough cream to anything it tastes good. I honestly think the sandwiches in F are the best, and thats saying something right there.

I had the Caneloni and mushroom soup on two IAH to PHL flights this months and both times it was very good. I am a Mrs. Stouffers lasagna fan, and this ranked very close to being as good.