American Airlines is introducing Pecan Lodge barbecue as a first class pre-order option on flights from Dallas – Fort Worth to the New York area (New York LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark – although they don’t mention Newark in their release).
Pre-order opens January 11 for flights departing from February 11. There are separate meals on offer in February and in March:
- February: Barbecue platter Smoked brisket and smoked sausage, paired with creamy mac and cheese, crisp coleslaw and a side of pickles, onions and barbecue sauce
- March: Chopped brisket sandwich Chopped brisket on a fresh brioche bun, roasted green beans, creamy potato salad and a side of pickles, onion, and barbecue sauce.
Interstellar Barbecue
Note that this is for DFW departures only. It’s not offered on the return. February’s option sounds far better, though do know that barbecue sauce should really just be for dipping. When the barbecue is any good, you shouldn’t be trying to hide the flavor of the meat. That’s what’s wrong with so many other styles of barbecue.
Although two years ago British Airways served barbecue out of Austin and oddly partnered wtih Aaron Franklin on the sauce (they weren’t serving his meat!). Franklin noted, “if you guys are going to be serving it on a plane… you need to hit the sauce pretty hard.”
Pecan Lodge was an elite barbecue destination a decade ago. I haven’t been in years, so can’t say what it’s like today though I note that while it was once #2 in the Texas Monthly Top 50 biennial barbecue rankings, it’s now fallen off that list completely. (The list itself has declined in value, however.) It’s likely fair to say that Pecan Lodge is not considered in the same league as LeRoy & Lewis, InterStellar, or Franklin.
Franklin Barbecue
Dallas just isn’t the epicenter of Texas barbecue. And that seems to be why people still pay attention to Pecan Lodge (and to Terry Black’s in Deep Ellum, even the original in Austin is overrated). A more legit pick would probably be Goldee’s in Fort Worth.
It seems like partnering with Pecan Lodge should mean (1) brisket, the staple of Texas barbecue, and an easier fit than their beef rib, (2) a side of The Hot Mess, a loaded split sweet potato piled with toppings and sauce. This is the thing people associate with Pecan Lodge.
I love to see American experimenting with new food partnerships, and route-specific food options. This is an airline that hasn’t been serving Australian wine on departures out of Sydney. So shifting its catering for a single set of flights could be a real progress.
And announcing short-term options is great, too. For too long the menus on American’s flights just haven’t varied enough. So offering different things every few months could be another sort of progress as well. It seems like it would be easy to extend a DFW-specific menu option to other flights (certainly easier than scaling it out to other stations).
Back in 2014 Delta partnered with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group and brought Blue Smoke barbecue onboard as a premium-cabin menu on transatlantic JFK flights. It began with London Heathrow and later expanded to other Europe flights. (They’ve more recently done Fox Bros Bar-B-Q as part of their rotating premium-cabin menu, too.)
This was essentially the start of a broader rotation of Union Square Hospitality Group menus on Delta. (Today you can get a Shake Shack burger, for instance.)
On its own I take this as a ‘premium signal’ from American, copying Delta’s early playbook. American itself links it to its premium efforts as well, tying it to serving better coffee (Lavazza) and champagne (Bollinger). So there’s a strong chance this particular effort is the kickoff of something larger.
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