Paradise Bakery & Cafe

Paradise Bakery & Cafe
Several locations in the US
Denver International Airport, Concourse C (Location visited)

Almost everybody complains that airplane food sucks. But that does have to correlate to food on airports? Pricey, bland, frozen, mass produced food provided by suppliers like Sysco, so far, my experience would agree with that statement. However, I must admit I might be mistaken, as I have been through only that many, including YVR (Vancouver International), Pearson (Toronto), Baltimore-Washington, O’Hare (Chicago), Philadelphia International and, most recently, St. Louis-Lambert and Denver International. And, as mentioned yesterday, my pseudo-dependency on Gravol.

On my last trip, I had to stop by Denver for a bit longer than expected (as in 6 hours…). After re-scheduling my trip, it was time to look for something to eat. I soon found out Denver International is big! I was in Concourse C and took me a couple of minutes to walk from one end to the middle point. And, when I got there, there were several restaurants, including fast food chains (read: MickeyD’s, among others). Was this the end of my streak? After walking around, I decided to stop at Paradise Bakery.

Now, there were a couple of reasons why I chose this place. For one, they had some decent looking soups, salads and sandwiches. Another reason was the queue. When you see people lined up, chances are food is good, or at least decent enough. But, you might say, they could be just like me, i.e., travellers who don’t know any better! Well, that’s true. However, when you see crew, flight attendants or pilots walking by, that ought to mean something, right? (Probably because it was something quick?! Ha!). Anyway, I queued myself and ended up ordering soup and half a sandwich.

For the half sandwich, I had chicken walnut. I won’t say it was the greatest sandwich in the world but at least it was not a generic burger. Likewise, it was not a generic bread loaf and it was a whole lettuce leaf rather than shredded. In a way, I regretted not ordering the whole sandwich… Well, almost because, along with the sandwich, there was this soup:

Fire roasted garlic tomato soup with some shredded tortilla to top it. It was quite thick and chunky. And being tomato, it had a light acidic hint. However, despite the name would indicate so, I couldn’t taste that much the garlic. And finally, the last part of the meal, a cookie.

This was the only part I did not finish. I found it too oily. Sure, you need to add some oil/fat to make them but, after I grabbed it, my fingertips were full of oil. Not to mention, for this trip, in my carry-on, I brought some Lesley Stowe’s raincoast crisps. For all this meal, plus a drink, it was around US $12.

Overall, this place finally broke the stereotype of crappy places with crappy food in airports. However, I came to realize something after that trip. It was not necessarily the airport but rather in the terminals/concourses I had to take my flights. In my trip to Philly, after I came back, I did some browsing and found out in the other terminals, almost at the other end of the airport, there were better options than the ones I had that day (it was not blogged as I did not take pictures, just say it wasn’t good). That means, next time I have a long overlay, I should look around…

Tagged under: Lunch • Random • Sandwich • Soup