You can now eat a Tom Douglas meal while flying the friendly skies

Airline food is notoriously terrible and these days it’s only free if you’re flying internationally. So when Seattle restaurant king Tom Douglas announced that Alaska Airlines is now serving a meal designed by him, I wondered why he’d want to put his name on something that’s so hard to get right. Turns out it was mostly a selfish endeavor.

“My biggest concern about airplane food is that if I crash somebody’s going to say, ‘What was his last meal?’ And it’s going to be who-knows-what in gray gravy with gray vegetables. So this is my opportunity to make my last meal better,” Tom Douglas cracks.

So what did he make?

“I did a small baked potato and then I made kind of a classic chili with ancho chili paste in it. Then I added smoked brisket to it. Finished the top with melty cheese and a roasted padron pepper.”

Lucky me, Alaska delivered us two meals, just like they’d be served in the airplane, in a plastic bowl, covered in foil. Tom threw them in the oven for 20 minutes and it came out piping hot and melty. The meat was very tender, the potato creamy, it definitely exceeded my low expectations. I practically licked the bowl clean.

Oh, and if you think the words ‘chili’ and ‘airplane’ don’t belong in the same sentence…

“It’s no beans so you don’t have to worry about that on the airplane.”

Tom says he tried to choose a dish that the average person would like, and something that would be hard to mess up.

“Times when airplane food really struggles is when there are flight delays and the food sits in the oven an hour longer than it’s supposed to. So I try to make dishes that stand up to that kind of intemperance. That’s why the chili works perfectly good because it could sit in the oven for an extra 30 minutes, if it had to, and it would still be delicious.”

These days, flying Alaska is like going to a Seattle restaurant in the sky. The cheese plate includes Pike Place Market’s Beecher’s cheese, there’s wine from Chateau St Michelle, and a burger spread with Skillet’s signature bacon jam. Starting next year, there will be even more from Tom’s kitchen.

“In January, to Hawaii, we start red miso glazed chicken with garlic fried rice and sesame carrots. I tested a cold salmon, like a salmon Niçoise plate with them, and they like it so we’re going to try and get that on. We’ve tested some oatmeal, for breakfast, and some new omelettes.”

You can try Tom’s baked potato brisket chili if you’re on a flight that’s two and a half hours or longer, and catch him on the cover the current in-flight magazine.