Last Call: The New Yorker Nails Airport-Restaurant Parody

Fly often enough and airport terminals blend together: the generic bookstores, the soulless wine bars, the weirdly expensive restaurants that always include "Grille" in the name and serve $16 house wine. I flew recently out of Newark Liberty International Airport and heard a man tell his wife, straight-faced, that the salad he was midway through eating was the worst of his life.

The current issue of The New Yorker has a perfect sketch of this plastic landscape called "Your Guide To The Cool New Airport Terminal." My favorite entry is:

Wolfgang Puck's Handcrafted Whatever-Was-Here Brasserie

This definitely isn't just the old convenience store rebranded with Google images of Wolfgang Puck and doubled prices. Yes, some of the photos are still watermarked, and, yes, two of them are of Michael Symon, for some reason. But we assure you that Chef Puck hand-selected every boxed turkey wrap, lukewarm salad, bag of trail mix, Snickers bar, Maxim magazine, and pair of Beats headphones for sale at this classic bistro/brasserie/gastropub.

Check out the rest of the article, and then let's all plan an anti-iPad-bartenders rally. And in closing—out of fairness to the true shining lights among the bleakness—I have had lovely meals at the Publican Tavern in Chicago O'Hare's terminal 3.