Yes, Airplane Food Can Actually Be as Good as Restaurant Food
When I heard that Jon and Vinny (a.k.a. chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo) had started doing food for Delta, I was skeptical like everyone else. I mean, how good could airplane food be (even it was being served in the big, cushy seats up front)? But then last summer, on my way back from L.A., there I was, staring down a BLT. Like, a real BLT—two slices of griddled Pullman loaf, crisp, thick-cut bacon, plump tomatoes, little gem lettuce, and homemade aioli. Oh, and homemade potato chips on the side, no less. Jon and Vinny (which is what everyone calls them in L.A., and they even run two hugely successful Jon & Vinny’s restaurants) hooked up with Delta last summer. They now produce nearly 800 meals a day in a catering facility in Inglewood for the carrier’s Delta One flights from LAX to JFK, Boston and D.C., as well as destinations as far flung as Sydney and Paris. They use all the same purveyors and farmers market favorites as they do for their numerous restaurants around the city. But, as detailed below, with their signature meatballs in pomodoro—a must-order both at Jon & Vinny’s and on Delta— they face challenges that no earth-bound chef would ever have to deal with. Here’s how they manage.
The Appetizer
Everything Shook and Dotolo serve on Delta One they make from scratch, which equates to more control over quality and costs. Here they hot-smoke Coho salmon in-house, blast-chill it, then break it into slabs for a rustic look.
The Bread
Focaccia is baked and grilled at the duo’s catering facility, then rubbed with a chile-garlic butter once cooled to protect the bread against its worst enemy (drying out) with a layer of fat.
The Meatballs
How do flight attendants fit all those little trays in their carts? No dish can be taller than two inches. “Otherwise the meatballs are the same as what we serve at Jon & Vinny’s,” Shook says. “Brisket and pork shoulder, with pomodoro made from cans of Bianco DiNapoli organic crushed tomatoes and served with a dollop of ricotta and garlic bread.”
The Salad
Supplying Delta with 1,200 meals a day means lots of salad, which translates to 50 cases of crisp Little Gem lettuce sourced from the Santa Monica and Hollywood farmers’ markets twice a week.
The Dressing
“Since food is stored at cold temperatures on the plane, olive oil congeals,” Dotolo explains. Buttermilk FTW.
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
