Welcome to today’s FlyingTypers, as we close the chapter on this rather extended year-end break and the beginning of 2025.
     Let’s in the spirit of the New Year party season recall a great gathering on several New Year’s Days over the years as we travel back to a once-upon-a-time at JFK International Airport in New York City.
     Beginning in 1981 on New Year’s Day at JFK International Airport, we attended one of the truly great airport annual events, when a company called Air La Carte (ALC) was the address for a festive and downright exuberant New Year’s Day Party.
     All the Chef’s and people responsible for the supplying most of the food
available on every international flight transiting JFK gathered and shared a tasting of their onboard offerings for an eager couple of hundred lucky attendees with their families and other invited guests.
     Amidst a forest of ice sculptures (incl. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs pictured here) the Air La Carte kitchens presented foods of the world as a culinary offering of the first rate. How long ago was this event held? Judging by the little kid in the front of the picture here named Geoffrey II, our son who was about three. In any case Geoffrey II today is 46, if you wish to do the math.
     We also recall the ALC operation was headquartered in Building 146 near Hangar 17 and the Pan Am Jet Center at the airport.
     We originally created this story in 1981 for Great Airports Kennedy, a 200 page words and picture book, with some of the text written by Eleanor Jane Arend, the Matriarch of the Arend family.
     Today you have a hard time finding any trace of ALC or for that matter many of the airlines it served, as time relentlessly marches on.
     The inclusion here of Greg & Paul Puolos—“The Sky Deli Duo” is sweet, recalling their pioneering effort in airline catering with their Chefs Orchid sandwiches once served in an on-board shoebox with tankards of hot coffee, delivered from a ladder into the DC3s at LaGuardia Airport and later to early fliers at JFK International, but we shall get to their story in due time.
     Although much has changed since 1981, the memory of those wonderful New Year’s Day Air La Carte parties gave us pause here in 2025 to look again at the world we knew 46 years ago as we celebrate the New Year of 2025.

     What was cooking at JFK Airport 44 years ago? Everything and anything you can think of. Croissants and cheesecakes, filets and flounder, salads and sandwiches, even blueberry blintzes and bagels. A hundred mouth-watering aromas assailed the traveler with a responsive nose, who might be arriving or departing JFK’s big sprawl . . . Air La Carte, for instance, was the in-flight food division of the service corporation known as ARA. Elsewhere others served but in 1981 only three airlines maintained their own commissaries at the airport, namely Pan American World Airways, United Airlines and TWA.
     Sky Chef, at that time was owned by American Airlines, supplying other airlines as well as its own. A leading Kosher food supplier was the firm of Borenstein in 1981, holding the exclusive contract for servicing EL AL Israel Airlines and also providing Kosher meals for many of the other carriers. Of course in 2025 all of that has changed, gotten bigger or disappeared altogether.
     So what’s changed? Certainly the elaborate menus common today on many of business and first-class sections and the “economy” snack trays in coach today make it seem more like a million years ago, i.e. since the first unimaginative, unadorned and often unwrapped cold sandwich was handed out at the departure gate of the early galley-less aircraft. The shoebox to hold the sandwich with maybe a piece of fruit and a cookie came later, with little additional comfort.
     New York City can lay claim to a couple of very inventive airline catering originals. Now we get to the two brothers, Paul and Gregory Poulos, who created a minor sensation when they introduced a “deluxe” club sandwich topped with a tiny, real orchid, and packed in a see-through box. Their company called itself Chef’s Orchid and post-World War II it began over at LaGuardia and quickly mushroomed from three employees delivering sandwiches and vessels filled with Coffee and Tea to waiting DC3s. By 1948 Chefs Orchid was a very busy 300 people unit, serving most all the international airlines operating at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport. Their idea was widely copied, but not before Ogden Foods bought the Poulos company. However, the Brothers were not finished. They simply could not get the airport out of their system and opened what became the most famous air cargo eatery at JFK branded Sky Deli in Building 110. (Fifty years ago, when we began publishing Air Cargo News, now Flying Typers, the Poulos Brothers kindly allowed us to put up our first cargo area newspaper stand where we distributed thousands of copies of our Air Cargo News from start up in 1975 until Sky Deli closed during the 1990s).
     Air La Carte in 1981 was the outstanding leader at John F. Kennedy Airport in the number of accounts it supplied. The company served 55 carriers, with both domestic and foreign operators represented. ALC began as Lakewood Foods in 1953 and came to JFK in 1954 moving into a red brick two-story building known as Building 146 in 1962. Air La Carte’s unusual ratio of success was attributed, in good part, to the impact of an expert managerial stuff working with the proficient, flexible production department. Its head chef George Ritter was a European-trained professional, whose background included the invaluable experience of a period as manager in charge of all dining room operations for the United Nations.
     The airlines, it should be noted, had some hands on people back in the day turning out outstanding meals at the airport. For example, Air India and Pakistan International Airlines, both served by Air La Carte operated with in-house Indian and Pakistani chefs, whose expertise was reflected in the hot curries and vegetarian dishes offered on board as an alternative choice to the regular fare. Sabena Belgian World Airlines had a Belgian chef at its command, and there was an Italian chef for Alitalia.
Eleanor Jane Arend

     Although all of it seems so long ago and far away, the memory of those days and the wonderful ALC Party followed by the always bright early January slap-in-the-face of cold air outside of Building 146 lives on. Here also, as the sun faded and the party was over, was the never to be forgotten view of a half dozen Pan Am 747s, nose to tail corralled together outside of Hangar 17.
     Happy New Year and the best of the best to all our readers in 2025.
GDA