Friday, July 10, 2009

On the way back from Guinea

It is often said that airplane food is terrible.  It most often is.

Unless you fly First or Business class, domestic flights are indeed feeding you badly, and most often you have to pay extra for it.

But one airline does understand that a nice flight includes a nice meal - no matter where you sit.

Air France.

Here is what the tray looked like when it appeared in front of me:

The menu was printed as follows:

Meal Service

Tabbouleh with tuna

Choice of main course
Curried chicken accompanied by rice with raisins
-or-
Filet of barracuda with sorrel and mushrooms, dauphinoise potatoes au gratin

Cheese

Fruit salad

Crème caramel

Coffee and tea

Beverages

Apéritifs
Upon request

Champagne
Jacquart Brut Mosaïque

White Wine
Vin de Pays d’Oc Chardonnay 2008 La Baume

Red Wine
Vin de Pays d’Oc Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 La Baume

Beer
Heineken

Mineral Water

Soft Drinks
Schweppes (Indian Tonic)
Schweppes (Agrum’)
Pepsi
Pepsi Max
7up

Fruit Juice
Fruité

Coffee and Tea
Nescafé

Brandy and Liqueur

This was probably the best meal I’ve ever had on a commercial flight.

Even though the tabbouleh was low on parsely and mostly made of couscous, and the tuna was from a can, it was not bad.  The baracuda was tender and moist, the potatoes were nicely done. The cheese, a camembert from Président, was half-decent, the bread was fresh, the fruits were alright, and the crème caramel was not the worst I’ve ever had.

All in all, a very decent meal.

Which is a good thing, considering the long layover I had at Charles-de-Gaule. Exhausted, I could not sustain myself in the Food Court, which was closed, and could not bring myself to indulge in caviar from one of the Expensive Duty Free Stores in Terminal 2E.

I had the choice between an Illy coffee shop and an Exki outlet.  I hesitated, passing the time reading, playing some games on the courtesy PS3 machines in the terminal or on my own PSP, and even was able to get some micro-sleep. After hesitating, I finally settled for the Belgian chain.

Exki’s philosophy is to serve high-qualiy fast food, “offering natural fresh produducts (sic) at all the times of the day.”  Their motto? “Natural, Fresh, Ready.”

Their fare is simple: salads, sandwiches, soups.  They claim not to use any additives, and some of their products are organic, such as their bread.

I decided to go with something simple, so I picked the Louise from their Vitalis selection , which was only 376 calories: homemade cooked ham and gouda cheese, served with a honey mustard dressing on an organic bread made with Malt.  The bread was of a very good quality, with nice tasty flakes of cereal.  The ham was also very good, nice and thick.  They were a bit cheap on the cheese, and they could have added more honey mustard as the sandwich was a tad dry.  Thankfully, I had a Coca-Cola to help me out.

Even by airport standards, at 9.60 Euros, this was a pricey meal.


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Posted by The Waffle at 22:25:46 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Beefer’s - breakfast for a gorilla.

After a night of enjoying Alexandria Bay’s lively nightlife, our eightsome was in need of a greasy breakfast before hitting the alleys of the Thousand Islands Country Club. And we certainly could not find a greasy spoon quite like Beefer’s.

A breakfast buffet family restaurant, it is located on the State Route 12 just on the way out of Alexandria Bay, Beefer’s is open six days a week until at least 11h30 or until later if they are busy.  It is closed on Tuesdays, for some strange reason.

And, what do you know, the original “Beefer’s” is back, as Bobby Williams decided that the breakfast business in Alexandria Bay was too good to stay out of any longer.  He apparently “renovated everything and built a new state-of-the-art buffet area that is designed to impress.”  Well, some might be easily impressed, so good job Bobby W. Perhaps you could spend a little more time upgrading the bathrooms, though.  Just a thought.

Beefer's BuffetThe buffet is quite diversified for a breakfast-only place, but it certainly doesn’t have the quality you can find in upper scale hotels. It consisted of scrambled eggs - with or without onions and peppers, home fries - with or without onions and peppers, hashbrowns, pancakes - regular or blueberries, French toasts, pastries, muffins, a toast station, english muffins,  biscuits, fresh fruits, bacon, ham, corn beef hash,  sausages, sausage gravy.

Yes, sausage gravy.

I don’t know about you, but that item,  I didn’t even go near it.  I was actually afraid something would jump out of the grey slime and grab me. Oh, and there was a chocolate fondue fountain too!

For all-you-can-eat, you pay 9.99$, plus an extra 2.00$ for a bottomless drink.  I don’t drink coffee, so I ordered a Sierra Mist, Pepsi’s response to Sprite and 7 Up.  I have to admit it is a very good lemon-lime soft drink, quite refreshing and not too sweet, perfect to balance the fat I was about to consume.

I choose both my home fries and my scrambled eggs with peppers and onions.  The eggs were not bad, considering the mass production, and the veggies added a nice twist to the eggs.  It didn’t worked as well for the home fries, which were way too soft and way to soggy to be enjoyable.  Some of them were even burned, but yet not crunchy.  How that can happen is beyond me.

The corn beef hash were also soggy, but in that case it kind of worked - the moisture coming from the corn beef fat and not exclusively from steam.  The bacon was crisp and not overcooked, and was the highlight of my meal.  Not too salty either.  The sausages were small and a little dry by moment.  Not exquisite, not juicy enough, but nevertheless edible.  The ham was overcooked and chewy because of it.


I cleaned my palate with a serving of strawberries, bananas and pineapple.  No chocolate, I abstained on that one, so I can’t really tell you about it. But it was a very popular items with the kids, I can tell you that much. And, in the end, I survived Beefer’s Gorilla Buffet.  And I got the t-shirt to prove it.


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Posted by The Waffle at 11:35:16 | Permalink | Comments (2)