You Can Take It With You

There is a school of thought that says that the banality of airline food actually serves to whet your appetite for the first meal in the city you’re going to. Interesting in theory, but . . . pshaw .

Once, in a fit of extreme economy, I ended up on a flight across the country that involved four or five stops, and each hiccup across the continent seemed just long enough for stewardesses to roll down the aisle with a ration of bourbon and a little bag of peanuts, a combination that I can taste in my throat to this very day.

And even now, on the ground, when I am tempted to reach for a third helping of barbecued ribs or the last slice of mom’s homemade macadamia-nut pie, I can stay my hand by thinking of a salad I was once served on a flight back from Atlanta--a salad so soaked with preservatives that I suspect its expiration date may have been sometime well into the second Amy Carter administration. The thought of that salad still inspires a shudder of revulsion four years later . . . and it wasn’t even the worst thing on the tray.

I think I might have been into my late 20s before I realized that you don’t necessarily have to eat the food served on airplanes, that no law actually requires you to choke down the dog-ear omelets, the charnel house muffins, the inevitable lasagna a la Elmer’s Glue. If you’re as busy as a lot of people I know, a long flight may be your best chance for an actual picnic: several uninterrupted hours of spectacular scenery, and nothing to do but eat.

There are a few ground rules for an airplane picnic--no pastrami or Korean fermented cabbage, unless you want everybody on the plane to smell what you’re eating, and nothing that you’d mind spattered on your shirt during a bit of air turbulence. Barbecued hot-links and Zankou’s garlic sauce are also considered bad form.

Bringing your own wine is technically illegal, but no more risky than sneaking a nip in the stands at a college football game. (The stewards and stewardesses generally don’t mind, and sometimes act as co-conspirators, hunting up corkscrews from first class or telling you how best to conceal a bottle of Zinfandel under your seat.)

And unless you are unusually ambitious, confine your picnic to dishes that can be picked up on the run between your house and the airport. As many times as I vow to do better, I have never gone airline-picnic shopping the night before departure.

Right on the way to the airport from Hollywood, at least if you take the quicker surface-street routes, is La Brea Bakery, whose crisp focaccia-- with fennel and cheese, with tomatoes and basil, with grapes and rosemary--are perfect airline food; they’re lightweight, unmessy, delicious, go great with a glass of red and keep in perfect condition for hours. Certain bicoastal guys seem to live on these things.

From the Ba Le sandwich shops in Alhambra and Westminster, the chile-spiked Vietnamese pork sandwich banh mi thit works pretty well--crisp, savory and hard to crush. Mexican tortas , perhaps from El Gallo Giro in Huntington Park, are great if they’re not too squishy. Crusty rotisserie chickens from Glendale’s Zankou or Hollywood’s Maroush or the new Kokomo A-Go-Go in the Farmer’s Market--or even El Pollo Loco, in a pinch--seem even more delicious at 30,000 feet. Or try Chinese food, take-out cartons of spiced tendon from Mandarin Deli in Northridge, or cold sesame noodles from Twin Dragon in West L.A., or spiced beef sandwiches from Peng Yuan in Monterey Park. Or consider a Japanese bento box assortment, maybe from Kitaro in San Gabriel, or an order of chirashi sushi --if you’re headed straight to the airport--from Shibucho downtown . . . or any sushi bar, really. Bring along some fruit and cheese and bread, too, the best you can find.

Nicest of all, sometimes, are the picnics on the way home. When I’m in New Orleans, I have been known to hail a cab to the airport directly from the Central Grocery, where I have inevitably been stocking up on muffaletta sandwiches; from New York it’s roast game birds and stinky cheeses from Dean and DeLuca; from Paris it’s charcuterie, Fleurie, and even stinkier cheeses such as Epoisses from whatever market street is closest to the hotel.

And the best meal in Milan may be a plane picnic grabbed from the complex of Peck food stores right at 10 a.m., when they open: a hunk of Peck’s baked ricotta still warm from the oven; a couple hundred grams of smoky speck and another couple hundred of San Daniele prosciutto; a bottle of Franciacortia red; a piece of Gorgonzola cheese so ripe it threatens to deliquesce at the slightest touch of a plastic knife. From Garbagnati bakery around the corner comes a stack of warm, seeded focaccia; from the produce store across the street comes a kilo of candy-sweet Sicilian tomatoes and a basket of tiny wood strawberries. It’s enough to keep you occupied, even if the in-flight movie is yet another showing of “Home Alone.”