American Airlines is continuing to roll out more food offerings to its clubs. So far I’ve most appreciated the soups, which are really delicious, and the other offerings — things that most travelers I talk to value — aren’t as much to my taste.
I certainly appreciate having convenient snacks available in the lounge. I hate having to trade off using the lounge (for clean restrooms, an opportunity to recharge devices, and catch up on work quickly) during a layover if I want a snack. And I often want a light option between flights, certainly not a fast food or sit down meal inside the terminal. So it’s great to see improvements in that direction.
American made an earlier round of improvements this year. Here’s the breakfast items they’ve been serving the past several months.
The big improvement they made in the afternoons was soup — and indeed, the soups are actually really good. My favorite was this spring’s tortilla soup — but the chicken coconut curry soup is a definite winner, and the roasted corn and green chili bisque is good.
I noticed new hummus and pita chips last week in the New York JFK remote concourse Admirals Club.
American has shared details (and photos) of the several new, additional food upgrades that have been made to clubs in legacy American Airlines hubs (Dallas, New York JFK, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago O’Hare) with plans to roll out further across the all of the airline’s clubs in the fall once they’ve gotten customer feedback on the specific new items.
Morning additions: “Breakfast breads; cold cereals in clear dispensers with milk; cooked oatmeal with containers of optional toppings (dried cranberries, chopped pecans and brown sugar); and a fruit salad with grapefruit sections, pineapple and chopped mint”
Cereal towers
Oatmeal with toppings
Fruit salad
Afternoon additions: “salad (tri-grain tabouli or Southwest lentil, depending on region); hummus dip and pita chips; and fudgy brownie bites”
Hummus and chips along with tomatoes, celery, carrots, olives, and cheeses
Brownie bites
I’m not a huge fan of hummus. I’d love to see some signature items that are a little more original and set the airline apart from competitors. But snacks are certainly welcome. Just don’t mess with my soups!
Now if they only had an ice cream sundae bar…
Ice cream fogged with dry ice on a New York JFK – Austin flight last week
Absolutely love the hummus. As does my vegetarian wife.
If salad’s are on the way, then I’m quite content with soup, salad and hummus/crudites.
Fruit salad in the morning would be great!
I think the fruit salad at breakfast idea is great.
But I would suggest, given the millions of folks on statins nowadays, to ditch the grapefruit in favor of some other fruit.
Will you please write about the disastrous new phone system at AA? I’m the biggest AA fan there is (11 yrs ExecPlat/DFW based) but the new system is so unreliable and unwieldy that I switched from AA for a few months to let them work out the kinks. I booked a flight to LIM today but needed human intervention to apply an old ticket value. After 5 min trying to work through the IVR system that never remembers my phone, i was told that the wait was 25 min for the ExecPlat desk. Back to DL for me for a while longer – but i really want for AA to get this fixed before the big res system switchover in Oct. I want them to be successful! Maybe they will listen to you. Thanks and i enjoy your blog immensely.
How sad is it that these are the improvements. But take what you can get.
And yes, the AA phone line has taken a dive for the worse. Much much longer hold times and slightly worse menu. A devaluation for me.
It’s also appalling that they sent NO notice whatsoever when our award ticket broke due to BA schedule change breaking the connection. If we did not login and see it (and spend 3 hours on hold thanks to the new phone system), we would have ended up like the lady behind us at the airport without a route.
As good as AA’s award chart is, they need to get their act together.
American should be listening to your input since you are their key demographic – typical fat and shallow American.
It’s truly sad people are cheering over soup as an enhancement in the lounges.
It shows how terrible the current state of lounge food is.
Soups are full of sodium and don’t count as real food in my books.
They are one of the cheapest food items airlines can provide that clearly shows they are not willing to spend more.
Come on AA, you can do better than this.
Playing catch up with UNITED
The best thing about the soups is that they’re better than anything else there is to eat at an Admirals Club. 🙂
I’ve noticed they’re a little chintzy in putting the soup out, though. I was recently at the DCA club and it was about 11:15 am. The breakfast stuff was gone, but there was no soup. I asked an employee if the club did soup, and I was told it comes out at 11:30. She actually put it out a little later than that, and I had to quickly slurp a bowl before leaving for my flight.
I do like the food choices at the AA lounges but at risk of sounding negative why do they have to come up with such weird flavors of soup. Would there be anything wrong with some nice chicken noodle or beef vegetable or whatever once in awhile. What’s next? Maybe tangerine goat cheese and lentils soup. Seriously.
@DaninMCI I think the soups taste really good, they’re interesting flavors, I’d always give chicken noodle or beef vegetable a pass personally… And please no goat cheese in my soup 🙂
Ugh more carrrrbbbbbssss….cheap carbs are easy to get when traveling, and go straight to my gut when sitting on an airplane. Boiled eggs? Chicken salad? Something? Now we’d be talking…
All are options that Delta has offered in its Sky Clubs for a year or, in some cases, much longer. When will AA match DL’s complimentary alcohol selections?
@Mark S that would be lovely.
@BL — please put the mirror down and try to pay attention. Gracias!
The comp food at Adm clubs truly sucks. That’s why I dropped my membership last month. How expensive would it be to offer lasagna & some other pastas? Amex clubs food has been great.