Text 10983, 87 rader
Skriven 2014-03-17 08:56:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: end Malaysia trip 335
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We were greeted with Pommery blue label, a pleasant and
fresh wine, a little cidery for my taste, but I stuck
with this for the whole flight.

Ch. Bonnet 11 (Entre-Deux-Mers) and Tic Tok Shiraz 11
(Australia) were the reds on offer. They were typical
examples, and United could have (and has) done far worse.
I just tried a few sips for quality control purposes.

[i]Shrimp and scallop with creamy seafood cocktail sauce[/i]

Decent tiger shrimp and a large but rather tasteless scallop
- I don't remember the serving size, because I got Lilli's as
well, as she doesn't eat marine life. Okay food, nothing to
write home about.

[i]Fresh seasonal greens, tomato, orange and croutons,
Thousand Island dressing or Asian citrus vinaigrette[/i]

I passed.

For my main course, I got the famous three cup chicken.
There's some dispute about the identities of the cups, but
from this interpretation I suspect a cup of soy sauce, a cup
of salt, and a cup of MSG. The accompanying jade rice was
tasteless and not particularly green; and broccoli, carrots
and bamboo tips, salty and mediocre, were perhaps the best
part of the plate.

[i]Tenderloin of beef, red wine jus, roasted potatoes,
asparagus, and pumpkin[/i]

Of course Lilli chose this, and of course it was terrible.
The meat was gray and cooked to texture of house insulation;
Lilli said it tasted weird as well. She has this thing
about microwaved and otherwise mistreated beef, and I guess
this qualified. I had a bite. She was wrong. It's like the
story Seymour Britchky used to tell about Mamma Leone's. To
paraphrase, someone finds a block of white stuff on the
table and samples it. He calls over the waiter and says,
take this cheese back, it tastes like soap. The waiter says,
no, I can't do that, you're wrong. Customer says the New
York 1970s equivalent of WTF?? And the waiter says, it can't
taste like soap, because it doesn't have any taste. The
anecdote ends with "Laughs all around." The steak in fact
had the taste of what I suspect house insulation would.

Speaking of which, there came by a cart with what the menu
called "international cheese selection with grapes and
crackers served with Port" - I tried bites of a couple of
the cheeses, which in fact tasted like soap and were not
worth the investment of a couple of lactase pills. I believe
one was an unripe Munsterish thing; I don't know Jack about
the other, but it was like Cheddar only tasteless.

The port was the somewhat estimable Quinta do Portal
Colheita 08, plummy and raisiny with menthol notes, like
cough syrup, in a good way.

Dessert: [i]ice cream with your choice of toppings[/i]
The toppings were almond flakes, strawberry, caramel, and/or
chocolate syrup. Some piggies were seen to take all of the
above. I just had a small scoop of Haagen Dazs vanilla,
which was worth the pills.

I missed the next meal service, [i]noodle soup with chicken,
vegetables and mushrooms in savory broth[/i], being pleasantly
asleep in the pleasantly sleepable though rather too thin bed.

The final tasty bit was [i]chicken congee with chicken, pumpkin
and bean curd[/i], of which the less said the better, except
that it came with slices of greasy you tiao, a strangely
grounding and comforting touch.

All in all, a not unpleasant flight but for the food.

UA 1481 SFO IAD 1055 1903 752 2EF

An uneventful flight.

The meal: pasta in basil tomato sauce with julienne of
yellow squash and zucchini. Utterly foul, even if you
thought you liked summer squash, which I detest.

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