Airplane food that's tasty? Delta's new first class menu brings comfort food with a twist

Delta Air Lines introduced new food menus in Delta One and domestic first class in September. The airline invited USA TODAY to their headquarters in Atlanta for a tour of the kitchens and to taste some of the new dishes.

Different regions of Delta’s network have different menus, but we sampled the one out of Atlanta, which grew out of a partnership with chef Mashama Bailey and includes some familiar favorites with a little extra zest.

“We found the customers want a lot of that familiarity and comfort food and things that they recognize but that have a little bit of a twist or a little bit higher quality than they expected,” said Mike Henny, Delta’s managing director of onboard service operations. “The trick for us is to balance the trends we see on the ground with what we see from customers in the air.”

Henny said it typically takes six to nine months to plan a new menu and Delta plans to refresh its menus three times a year for domestic flights and twice a year with some smaller adjustments in between on international flights.

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“We’re always keeping that in mind – and it goes for the wine selection as well – in that environment, your taste buds are dull because you've got lower atmospheric pressure, lower humidity and you just don’t taste as strongly as you would on the ground,” Henny said. “Historically the way a lot of carriers and caterers would approach that was: we’ll just throw salt at the problem, and that doesn’t help. That just dries you out further, it quickly becomes overbearing as a flavor. What we’ve tried to focus on is relying on aromatics, relying more on other ways of providing things like acidity in a dish.”

Here are all the domestic first-class meals we got to try at the catering facility in Atlanta. They’ll be included in the price of your ticket on qualifying meal flights in first class. For purchase meals off a different menu will be available in the main cabin.

Breakfast

• Poached fruit

• Yogurt with granola and berry compote

• Smoked salmon and cream cheese platter with pickled onions and cheddar crackers

• Scrambled eggs with potato hash cake and chicken sausage with gravy

• Overnight oats with sweet potatoes, blueberries maple syrup and nuts

• Chilaquiles frittata with salsa verde

Lunch/dinner

• Feta cheese and pecan side salad with buttermilk ranch dressing

• Curry chicken salad

• Potato side salad

• Fox Bros. short ribs with roasted fingerling potatoes, carrots and turnips

• Shrimp and grits

• Pumpkin ravioli with brown butter cream sauce

• Cheddar cheeseburger with caramelized onion jam

• Cheese pie dessert

Passengers flying domestic first class within the U.S. or to select Caribbean destinations on Delta can choose among these items. All Delta One business class customers, even on domestic flights, have access to the international catering menu.

There were no weak items on the menu. Henny said that the short ribs are a particular favorite among Delta passengers, adding that they tend to fare better at altitude than steaks that other carriers often serve.

“What used to happen was you’d have a lot more frozen food, you’d have a lot more kind of frozen things coming into the kitchen. If it gets plated it just gets plopped into a dish, then frozen again or kept frozen the whole time and then delivered to a customer onboard,” Henny said. “We’ve really made a concerted effort to move away from that.”

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What kind of food is served on a plane? Check out Delta's premium menu