United Club, various locations

One pays a hefty chunk for club membership, which now
includes snacks and free-flow bottom-shelf booze.

Camelot Pinot Noir - it doesn't matter what vintage this
is, it's a dilute, light-colored, fragrant wine, not wholly
unpleasant on the palate, but not particularly nice, either. It
has notes of cherry, plum, and smoke and indeed would go well
with barbecue, but outside food is not allowed in the clubs.

Budweiser and Bud Light (sometimes Coors Light as well) are
the free pours here, with Goose Island products and maybe a
local offering on tap. Some imports in bottles at full price.

The much touted lunch offerings are a standard salad bar and
a soup or two of the day, from Campbell's Foodservice:

New England clam chowder is acceptable, not as good as Snow's
used to be, better with a shot of sriracha;

corn chowder is better if you get a ladleful with more corn
than potatoes; some of the clubs offer bacon bits on the salad
bar, which raises the tastiness by an order of magnitude; Huy
Fong or Tabasco helps as well;

Italian wedding soup is okay if you manage to fish for a few
of the tiny meatballs. The soup is sodium-rich, though, and
the pasta tends to be mushy. Not too many vegetables, which
include I believe chard;

pasta fagioli is surprisingly savory despite the claim that
it's vegan. I attribute this to MSG.

Things I've not been able to bring myself to taste: vegetarian
chili, vegetable soup, and cream of broccoli.

There are many kinds of baked goods, including rather moreish
eggy brownies, and a candy table, which I ignore unless there
are malted milk balls.

The mix-it-yourself soft drink machine has appeared in the
most important clubs, SFO, LAX, and ORD. They are an amusement,
because you can taste tiny tastes of such abominations as Fanta
mixed with Diet Coke, adding dribs of red wine or the free
Evan Williams or Bacardi if you care to: what's there to do if
your airplane is delayed for two hours?

==
The Alaska Lounge (celebration of Independence day, er, month)

I get occasional access to this either by coattailing it with
one of my Alaskan friends or flying on a first-class award on
Alaska, or, in Anchorage, through a reciprocal lounge agreement
with United.

In Anchorage you get up to three drinks (but who's
counting). Elsewhere they may tally more carefully, but
most of the clubs are small enough that the staff don't
rotate much. Draft beer, mostly from Alaskan, and bottom-
shelf wine are free, with spirits, bottled beer, and some
fancy brands of wine at competitive prices. For some
reason, Rombauer wines were featured for a while, which
irritated me, because before one could get them at the
Club Paris and possibly other restaurants at a fair price,
but this stunt brought them to the attention of the flying
public, with the result that at Club Paris, at least, the
price has gone from a reasonable 150% of retail to 400%.

Stung by this, for wine I picked up the complimentary
Canyon Road Merlot, which was cheerily cherrily and pretty
revolting, actually. My taste buds actually tried to shut
down when assaulted by the acidy-bright liquid, with its
aroma of table grapes and cyanide.

I hurriedly switched to the Beach House amber ale, which
bridged well with its aroma of red fruit followed by
malt, but not too sweet on the palate with a touch of
hoppiness. A little thick to be a warm-weather quencher,
but pleasant enough, and the price was right.

This went nicely with chili con carne no beans, which had
crumbles of softish meat in a gravy that was more tomato
than cumin or pepper influenced. It cried out for hot pepper,
except all that was available was Tabasco, which would have
made the tomatoiness overbalance into a sour mess. I'm
guessing it was from Campbell or Sysco.

There were red-white-and-blue-spangled cookies with apricot
jam filling leftover from some celebration or other; these
were still reasonably fresh, an oil and/or Crisco-based
shortbread with a nice acidy fruity inside.

Also various Minute Maid products, none of which, including
the woeful orange juice, is ever worth sampling, so I didn't.
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