MCO-SEA - DL 307 - 6 Oct
A little bummed this flight equipment swapped from the A321Neo to a 757 a few weeks before the flight, so I didn't get to try out the new aircraft. Both meals appeared to be round-trip catered from Seattle via the inbound, as evidenced by the Bell's cookie; I suspect that Florida catering is still not recovered from Hurricane Ian. So the service failure you're about to read about may be partially due to that, in fairness to Delta.
Braised Beef Short Rib
with butternut squash and sage risotto, wilted rainbow Swiss chard, and roasted figs. Served with a side salad of burrata, candied sweet potatoes, harissa, cashews, and micro greens.
This was.. pretty good! Would definitely order again, and I'm not usually a plane-beef kind of guy. The short rib was actually tasty and the portion size was about right. The chard and risotto both made a decent accompaniment; maybe the risotto was a little Ben's Original grade rice, but in general this dish worked. I'm not a fan of sweet potatoes so only my partner ordered this meal, but fortunately when it arrived the sweet potatoes were on the side and didn't affect the flavor of the burrata.
Chicken Breast Salad
with Asian slaw, cucumber, cilantro, broccoli, green onion, shredded carrot, toasted almonds and edamame. Served with a side of pineapple with togarashi.
This was a pretty basic meal; kind of like someone upended a Taylor Farms Asian Salad Kit into a bowl and added a few pieces of Costco rotisserie chicken. This is not a bad thing - I eat essentially this meal on a regular basis at home. The various accompaniments really needed a little bit more knifework done, IMHO; I ended up sawing the whole thing apart and mixing it up, which ended up a little messy, but the end result was tasty. The dressing wasn't spicy - just a sweet fusion sauce, again similar to a grocery store salad kit. The whole thing was cold; only having one warm option for a dinner meal is kind of a continuing frustration with Delta's current meal options, IMHO, but this was about as good as you're going to get with a chilled option.
The pineapple, on the other hand, apparently had Special Togarashi(tm) seasoning... when I went to try it, I speared a piece of pineapple and surprised a few drunken fruit flies who were buried in the dish, who flew out at me. I got to play whack-a-fly on the side drink table. Lovely.
When brought to the F/A's attention, they politely and quietly swapped out my side for a spare of the burrata that was
Drosophila-free; to be honest, I expected some sort of additional service recovery for bugs in my meal as well as a promise to write it up so the caterer could address the issue, or at least a heartfelt apology; shrugging it off is pretty par for the course these days though, I guess. (The sides arrive covered in aluminum foil, so it seems highly likely the fruit flies were "packed in" at the catering kitchen in Seattle.)
So, uh, if you pick this one, watch for extra protein. I mean, y'all were complaining about the Impossible dishes not being real meat, so I guess Delta's giving you what you wanted?
