A Food Guide For Grounded Air Travelers
Snow has buried much of the country over the past few days — and it's causing major delays at airports, especially in the Northeast. If you're stuck in one of those airports, New York Times writer Matt Gross has some ideas on how to stay nourished — be it great sushi at New York's JFK, or budget Ethiopian food just outside the Atlanta airport.
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ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered. From NPR News, I am Andrea Seabrook. Today is the first day of winter, but the snow certainly didn't wait. On Wednesday, Las Vegas got five inches of it - the biggest snowfall in 30 years. On Friday, Michigan was buried under a foot and a half. And today, the Northwestern and Northeastern corners of the country are getting blitzed again. That's caused airport delays from Philadelphia to Boston.
If you're one of the travelers stuck in those airports, you might take some tips from New York Times reporter Matt Gross. He traveled to seven major airports in four days just to sample the food. He wrote about it in today's paper, and he says there are a few surprises. Say you're waiting at the new Terminal 5 at New York's JFK.
Mr. MATT GROSS (Writer, New York Times): The sushi place has this really neat duck and foie gras meatballs and there's also - let's see, La Vie which was a little French bistro.
SEABROOK: Yum, but if you're in Chicago bracing for another storm at O'Hare, you might be out of luck.
Mr. GROSS: I went on to have some really terrible, terrible soul food and a peach cobbler that tasted like slugs in slug sauce.
SEABROOK: Uuggh. Sometimes, he says, the solution is leaving the terminal. In Atlanta, he found a gem of a cafeteria in the cab drivers' parking lot.
Mr. GROSS: Since almost all the taxi drivers in Atlanta are from Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and West Africa, that's the kind of food that they eat. So five, six dollars gets you this great, honest, authentic, Pan-African meal.
SEABROOK: And travelers, even if you can't find a meal that cheap, Gross says just remember the food at the airport is a whole lot better than the food on the airplane.
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