UA 695 BOS EWR 1200 1318 738 1A,3A
was 1551 BOS EWR 1400 1533 738

United actually sort of came through, informing us of
possible weather delays, but didn't do a rebooking, so
I called up reservations and got a friendly but
unclear-on-the-concept agent who tried to route us
through Dulles, but I prevailed on her just to put us
on an earlier connection to Newark. She got us seats
in first but not together, but that didn't matter - at
least we got out of Dodge.

We actually came into Newark a fair amount late, but no
worries, as we now had another hour and half cushion to
enjoy the Polaris lounge, where I had a date with the
Schloss Johannisberg gold label Riesling, the least
offering of that eminent brand. It was a nice semidry
fairly perfumed and fruity wine, with apricots and
pineapple (am I the only one who gets tropical fruit
out of German Rieslings?), reasonably concentrated with
a pleasant longish but unobtrusive finish, good with food.

I ordered Bonnie the reliable and middle-of-the-road
Rodney Strong Cabernet.

And then to the dining room, where I asked for green pea
dumplings and avocado bao, but it turns out these are
offered only at breakfast, so I got something else, to wit

pea-quinoa(!) timbale, which were very sweet but with a
good ratio of peas to poison; the garnish pea shoots and
slivered snow peas adding a not unpleasant green muchness
to the whole. Sad to say that the perfectly cooked grain
still had the texture of small medium-rare insects; then
we both got the burger as rare as New Jersey allows, which
turned out to be medium-rare, with a nice brioche bun and
a good New York Cheddar and decent but very salty bacon.
We both asked for them to leave the signature fried egg off.
The sandwich was pretty decent for the price, which was 0.

Tenet The Pundit, a Syrah from Washington, meaty and with
lots of dark fruits, went well.

After the rather sparse but not uncomfortable dining room
the comfy chairs beckoned, as did a snooze and an e-mail
check. An attendant came by with wine cobbler - a layer of
very sweet whipped cream, a layer of some starchy substance
that might as well have been mashed potato, and a wine jelly
with pears that tasted similar to Julia Child's pears poached
in red wine. Not bad, but what was that middle layer?

On the buffet, also a volonte but not so enticing, they had
vanilla, chocolate, raspberry, pistachio, lemon, and coffee
macarons which were pretty good and pretty much as expected,
except the raspberry ones had a strong flavor of mayonnaise.

We left the friendly confines when our flight was first
announced. Mistake. A quarter-mile waste of time each way
and the United Club is nowhere so nice, though it's better
than waiting by the gate, of which we ended up also doing
quite a lot.
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