You don’t hear us talking a lot about the fact that we make things fresh on board each morning at Clover. For those who work here, it’s just part of how things are. I started thinking about this a lot on my flight home from Europe. This was my last meal purchased with Euros. I think it cost me 7.50 at the Paris airport.
Looks pretty yummy, right? Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, some cous-cous, chives, shredded carrot, hardboiled egg, and a little bottle of vinaigrette. I was really excited to have something sort of healthy that morning. Full disclosure, I wasn’t feeling 100 percent. I hadn’t slept the night before. One reason for this was that my friend Katie had taken me to a party, and another reason was that I was trying to manipulate my sleep schedule so I wouldn’t have jet lag when I got home (really bad idea, totally didn’t work).
So I was really excited to eat a salad on the plane. But I couldn’t finish it. The worst part was the lettuce. I could tell it had been frozen and re-frozen and thawed. It was translucent, stiff and limp at the same time. Tasted like nothing had ever been alive about it. And I know, this is the norm for airport food in the US. I guess I had just gotten spoiled in Italy with the airport food there. And it got me thinking about the decisions we make around “freshness” here.