Half of Atlanta probably got the email today from Delta telling us that at long last the food inside its Sky Clubs is getting a major makeover . Starting tomorrow, there will be hard-boiled eggs. Two kinds of soup. Free Bailey's Irish Cream. Mini assorted cheesecakes. Otis Spunkmeyer mini muffins. O happy day!
I've been traveling a lot a lot a lot over the past couple of years, so I ended up getting a credit card that offered Sky Club admission. I've used it a lot for the relative quiet from the storm, the free Wi-Fi, the bad coffee from the fancy machine, the occasional Bloody Mary and, well, hmm....
At breakfast there is perfectly decent oatmeal, which I never love but always eat as penance for the overindulgence that comes with travel. It is usually better than the Litchfield Penitentiary bagels.
Later in the day I usually make do with a couple of slickly wrapped yellow cheese tiles, crackers, paper tubes of hummus and those too-small-to-be-mealy red delicious apples, which are now the only red delicious apples I ever eat during the year. The carrots and celery sticks depend on the specific Sky Club, but props to the good folks on the T Concourse who always seem to keep them fresh and crunchy.
I've also been told a couple of times (and always very politely) that I'm not allowed to sneak food into the Sky Clubs. One attendant gave a rather longing look to my sliced prosciutto and said, "Why don't you just finish that up quickly."
But now there will be so much to choose from, including Greek yogurt, hard boiled eggs, Thomas English Muffins (nooks! crannies!) and "locally sourced bagels" on the breakfast table, along with four kinds of cereal. It's like the Delta bed and breakfast!
Later in the day, there will be green salad, chicken salad, two kinds of soup, marinated mushrooms, bananas and dark chocolate chunk cookies. Even the crudites are getting a makeover. Carrots and celery will be joined by red pepper strips and broccoli. The pepper strips worry me: those things do not take well to inattention.
I'm not sure this buffet will keep me away from my favorite airport pizza, which is at Tagliare on Concourse D at LaGuardia Airport in New York, but I may wolf down a slice on the way in and move on to salad.
(A sidebar: Once I told the super-efficient woman who works at Tagliare that I come through every few months and always look forward to ordering a slice of cheese pizza from her. A true New Yorker, she looked me up and down with a look of disbelief and shouted, "Next!" It made me love her even more.)
But I do look forward to seeing how what the new food options are like when Delta rolls them out tomorrow. Seriously, if the eggs taste not like they were boiled a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away but more like something a mom would put in a lunchbox, that will go a long way toward making travel easier. If this food is just simply make-do good, then we've all got another reason to applaud the hometown airline.
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