The cultural differences between those of us who work in NYC and the rest of America is always shocking. I just assume that a beer with tax and tip will cost me $10 anywhere.

And that a burger in a bar will be $15 if I'm lucky...

Don't FA's commonly put their own food into those ovens? I remember flying on PHL-ORD on thanksgiving once and the FA told me they had turkey in the oven but it was for them (after I joked about getting the snack basket instead of a turkey dinner). I've also see FA's put in a burger or something that looked like it came from the food court. I've never seen fried chicken in there though :)

As for the pizza, I figured it would not be crisp. If you put it in the oven with the cover on top, you are basically steaming it. Which is why other "normally crisp hot food" shouldn't be served on an airplane. I'd much rather have a simple dish made well than a fancy dish made poorly. Airlines like many restaurants try to jump before they can crawl. Get the basics right first. (That applies to everything)

Unfortunately, I think the point is that junk food sells. I too would prefer healthier options but they tend to be more perishable and given the choice on an 'anonymous' airplane, I am confident lots of people are willing to make worse decisions than they otherwise would on the ground!

Junk food sells...and has a lower acquisition cost. Aside from this, I would suspect (or at least hope from a business standpoint) that UA is getting a significant discount on the pizza products offset by Uno branding concessions (otherwise they are dumb as rocks).

We're talking about roughly 30-50 cents of ingredients, mostly automated assembly and boxing, and a big concession from Uno - hence very wide margins for UA which are needed given the fast spoilage rate vs a snack box.

Egg white flatbread is being discontinued as of August 1st. It may still be shown on the menus until the 31st though :rolleyes:

I, for one, like the pizza. It's not restaurant quality deep dish, but it's not bad. Not as good as the burger, but not bad. I'm still trying to figure out how to make it not as soggy (trying different containers for myself), but with a steam oven it's not easy.

Not really supposed to. But it happens, as you experienced with the turkey.

FWIW, as someone else noted, they're rarely (if ever?) cleaned by catering/techops. The case of shelves gets changed, and I think those may get cleaned, but certainly not the units themselves. If FAs get really bored, I've seen them try and clean it, but without decent supplies onboard, I question how clean they really get.

So it is a steam oven and not a radiant heat oven?

I'm assuming you've tried heating a pizza without the lid on.

Could you build a aluminum foil convective tunnel around a pizza (assuming you had foil on hand, place the pizza inside the tunnel but with room above the pizza for heat to flow)?

David

Depends on the plane configuration. Some are steam, others are convection. I tend to refer to all of them as steam ovens though.

I've tried lidless as well as into the aluminum pans (had to cut it up though, the sizes are different). Haven't tried a tunnel, though I could do it in theory. Might need to bring my own foil though.

Wait..is that confirmed? They only had it for a month?

i actually wanted to try it - it looked good. FA on my last flight (afternoon) said she'd heard pax saying it was good. But I haven't been on a breakfast flight to try it - do too many short hauls and not that many 3+ hour fligts.

I also got to try the pizza today. It was quite soggy in the middle but the crust was somewhat hard. Well, at least it was hard enough that made slicing it difficult.

Overall, it's decent but not as good as the burger.

Having lived in Chicago for 25 years, I can say this is the most common description for frozen/reheated deep dish pizza.

The picture provided above does not look appetizing at all to me, and pizza may well be my favorite food. I guess at this point I'll applaud the effort to try something new, but I'm hoping they're not locked into this for too long and offer something different soon.

Yeah, company communication to FAs. I heard it was tasty as well, but didn't ever get around to it. Oh well, I like the sandwich anyways. Wish we could get more of it boarded though, it never makes it past the exit rows.

Looks like there's more new stuff to come on top of the June news release items. A contact from United told me: "What I can tell you is this: we will have new breakfast and lunch options rolling out in November as well as new lunch additions in September. Additionally, the future menus will feature new items not yet seen on the menus, although there is always a possibility that a favorite may come back in the future."

I'm sure this is partly in response to the egg white bfast not working out. In any case, they're tinkering and that's good to see.

As MR gold, you're UA Silver, and can get seats ahead of the exit rows (E+) at OLCI - are you on really full flights?

This is a Plat benefit, not Gold.

note: fezzington is a FA.

David