March 21, 2011
I am on board an AirFrance flight bound from Detroit to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport. The latter is truly a French airport in every sense of the word. The design is clearly a case of form over function. However, I love the service on AirFrance so am willing to tolerate the inconvenience. Still, part of me wishes there was a Charles de Barkley airport. The possibilities are incredible.
Dinner is being served. Everything sounds delightful. We will start with bread, of course. According to the menu, we will also have a Niçoise-style rice with flaked tuna. This is followed by our choice of “chicken fricassee, mashed potatoes with spinach, peas” – or – “fusili pasta with seafood, marinara sauce and creamy white sauce.” I will choose the former. Dinner will also include cheese, “entremets,” and orange cake with cranberries.
Top Chef it ain’t, although the printed menu is a nice touch, as I expect will be the champagne.
In the end the bread was dry and served with land-o-lakes butter (curiously, a brand that was not featured in the butter tasting of yore). The tuna salad was basically Uncle Ben’s rice with a few slices of olive and a mound of packaged tuna served on a lettuce leaf. The chicken made me yearn for Stouffer’s escalloped chicken with noodles, which would be more flavorful and have the added bonus of reminding me of mom. The cheese was Tilamook medium cheddar. The orange cake was a marble chocolate cake (and unimpressive). Finally, the rice pudding (perhaps the entrements?) was KozyShack. Yes! KozyShack rice pudding on AirFrance! It was strangely good, with a short ingredient list including things like milk, rice, eggs, and “natural flavorings,” the latter being the only funky ingredient.
The champagne was nice, as was the cognac they brought me after dinner.
Sadly dinner didn’t live up to the promise made by the menu. Now I just feel misled…
March 2021: Butterblogger is finally traveling and still hasn’t really found a voice. One thing to note is the reference to a butter tasting. At one point during our weekly Top Chef dinners we had a butter tasting. We started with butter on crackers, but eventually abandoned the crackers and just ate pats of butter. The final winner was President butter with. Calder Dairy butter and Kerrygold both ranking very highly.
None of us felt well the next day.
butterblogger 