Worst Airport Food

[Mikey]

1. Terminal 1 San Diego (Southwest)
2. Terminal 1 SFO (Southwest)

Been to both of these many times and it never gets any better. Waiting now in SFO for an hour delayed flight and you’d think that in such a wealthy world class city they could do a little better than shit in a bowl for $20 and generic “red” wine.

LS may have some places that beat this but I’m just going from experience.

[Mikey]

Even in Reno fucking Nevada they have a wine bar with decent grape juice and some pretty edible food.

[Mikey]

2. Terminal 1 SFO (Southwest)

Why would you dare eat in such a shitty place? Oh - wait!

Good supply of shit around here I guess.

[BSmack]

The worst food? In flight "meals."

[atmdad]

1. Terminal 1 San Diego (Southwest)
2. Terminal 1 SFO (Southwest)

Been to both of these many times and it never gets any better. Waiting now in SFO for an hour delayed flight and you’d think that in such a wealthy world class city they could do a little better than shit in a bowl for $20 and generic “red” wine.

LS may have some places that beat this but I’m just going from experience.

I do agree, I have not seen anything worth shit there in SD. You have that circular bar on one side and burger joint on the other. Not sure why you are eating at T1 San Diego though, you should either be getting there just in time to take off or getting the fuck out of there to UBER/Lyft a ride home.

SFO, T1 that sucks too. Although in T3 there is a Gordon Biersch right were you come back in from the international terminal. After getting off a 12 hour flight returning from a week in Korea or a couple of weeks in China, I would say they have a pretty damn good hamburger. It's all relative to how deprived you are after eating tofu, black fungus, rice, peanuts, goat kidney, kimchee, bean curd noodles, and other random shit.

[Mikey]

Haven’t tried eating anything at T1 in quite a while. I do observe though. My most typical travel is the 6:30 am flight to SFO (6 or 7 times a year). A few times when I first started doing this I tried picking up some breakfast after clearing security but found out pretty quickly that it was not such a good idea. This morning I ate a light breakfast before hitting the road.

I’ll have to say that T2 is a lot better. Just the fact that they have a Stone Brewery outlet there puts it in a whole different class. Unfortunately I rarely set foot in that part of the airport.

[Rooster]

De Gaulle in Paris has lousy food. All of it looks pretty, but the taste is akin to the flavor of what is running down the legs of the French Army while being chased by the Wehrmacht.

[Mikey]

Crab lice?

[Mikey]

Haven't been to Portland for a while but 20 years ago or so (at least it seems that long) I had about a 4 hour delay and found a brewpub with probably 20 microbrews on tap. I think I sampled at least half of them. That long ago the craft brew thing wasn't nearly as big as it is now and I was quite impressed.

[Dinsdale]

A little pricey but so it is with air travel.

Uhm... we've been over this recently -- it's the cheapest airport food in the country. Port of Portland has a rule that restaurants can't charge any more than they do at their non-airport locations (which they must have at least one of to operate at PDX).

They have had some nice local talent musicians playing ambient style, and the whole place feels good. Maybe it's the edibles.

LOTS of pot shops near the airport. The Green Mile is right up the road (mile+ stretch of road with over 10 shops).

That long ago the craft brew thing wasn't nearly as big as it is now

Maybe not where you live. Not a whole lot different here from 20 years ago.

[Mikey]

A little pricey but so it is with air travel.

Uhm... we've been over this recently -- it's the cheapest airport food in the country. Port of Portland has a rule that restaurants can't charge any more than they do at their non-airport locations (which they must have at least one of to operate at PDX).

They have had some nice local talent musicians playing ambient style, and the whole place feels good. Maybe it's the edibles.

LOTS of pot shops near the airport. The Green Mile is right up the road (mile+ stretch of road with over 10 shops).

That long ago the craft brew thing wasn't nearly as big as it is now

Maybe not where you live. Not a whole lot different here from 20 years ago.

If the craft beer industry in Oregon hasn't changed in 20 years then I'd say there must be a fairly major problem.

[Dinsdale]

If the craft beer industry in Oregon hasn't changed in 20 years then I'd say there must be a fairly major problem.

It's changed somewhat, in that InBev bought up the larger ones, and they now have national distribution. As far as locally/regionally, the market was saturated 20 years ago (there's currently 77 breweries in Portland. Another 40in the close-in burbs). Another "change" is transplants moving here thinking they're going to brew some swill, and get rich... which ain't happening in a saturated market.

Multi-billion dollar industry.

[Kierland]

Was on a flight thru PDX a while back. Outbound flight was overbooked. The flight attendant offered $300 in Airport food and a free flight. One millisecond later I volunteered. Yummy food and lots of it. Hit a sushi bar and a good pub. Bought a few rounds. A good time was had by all.

[Left Seater]

Most airport food is the suck. Trying to actually determine the worst is pretty damn hard. My votes for the worst tend to be little airports with only a single option for food. These places have no competition.

Further let’s make sure we are all on the same page when it comes to airport food outlets. In most airports around the country one group owns all of the airport concessions. Say HMS Host. They then offer branded spaces to restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores, etc. The name on the restaurant isn’t the folks making the food. The name on the restaurant just pays HMS Host a fee for the branding. HMS Host then hires the staff, handles deliveries, cooks the food, etc. The name on the restaurant gets a say in uniforms, decor, presentation, etc. They also do spot checks for quality and branding standards. It also uncommon for employees to move between “restaurants” on different days of the week. Mon-Wed dude is making burgers at Shake Shack and Sat-Sun he is making tacos at Torchy’s.

Finally, Portland doesn’t have the cheapest airport food or anywhere close. They do have a requirement that food prices can’t be any higher than prices outside the airport. This isn’t unique to PDX, many airports have the same requirement. But make no mistake a burger at PDX is more expensive than a burger in Des Moines.