ATLANTA, June 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Los
Angeles-based chefs Jon Shook and
Vinny Dotolo are behind some of the
most sought-out restaurants in town and, beginning this fall, Delta
(NYSE: DAL) customers on flights departing Los Angeles International Airport will enjoy
their cuisine at 30,000 feet.
The new partnership with the two L.A. chefs and entrepreneurs
continues more than a decade of Delta bringing star-quality food
and beverage programs to its flights.
Delta One customers on flights from LAX to JFK and DCA will
enjoy culinary creations inspired by the duo's local
restaurants. The new menus will feature local, fresh and
seasonal ingredients, and will be reflective of the fare served at
several of Shook and Dotolo's most popular establishments including
Animal, Son of a Gun and Jon & Vinny's.
"Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo are known for delighting diners at
their restaurants through diverse offerings and familiar flavors
presented in bold, unexpected ways," said Allison Ausband, Delta's Senior Vice President –
In-Flight Service. "We are thrilled to bring their fare to the
skies and offer a taste of some of Los
Angeles' most popular restaurants to our Delta One customers
— whether they're locals who are craving a taste of home or
visitors who want one last essential L.A. experience before heading
home."
Similar to the meals Union Square Hospitality Group creates
daily for Delta One customers out of New
York, Shook and Dotolo will prepare the new menu selections
at a dedicated facility in Los
Angeles. The freshly made meals will be transported to LAX
each day from their catering company, Caramelized Productions, to
ensure customers experience restaurant level service in the
skies.
"We are excited to bring our local L.A. cuisine to Delta One
customers across the country," said Shook and Dotolo. "Delta is
really taking an innovative approach to on-board dining and we are
proud to partner with them as they change the conversation around
airplane food and elevate the customer experience inflight."
Investing in the Customer Experience
The new partnership with Shook and Dotolo was announced on
June 7 at Altitude, an immersive
pop-up lounge in L.A. created to showcase some of the airline's new
amenities and products that are part of its multi-billion dollar
investment in the customer experience. The lounge, located at
Greenhouse at Platform in Culver
City, was open to the public and offered attendees an
opportunity to interact with sites, sounds and tastes of the
airline's upgraded in-flight experience, including free Main Cabin
meals on select flights, upgraded free Main Cabin snacks, TUMI
amenity kits with Kiehl's products, an Alessi-designed collection
of serviceware in Delta One and First Class, Westin Heavenly®
In-Flight Bedding, and Delta's new noise-canceling LSTN headphones
offered to Delta One customers.
Delta has also made significant investments in the customer
experience on the ground, in addition to plans to add nearly 250
new aircraft to its fleet in coming years. These include new Delta
Sky Club locations in Denver,
Atlanta and Seattle, and Club renovations in Nashville, Dallas, Newark and Minneapolis-St. Paul, airport enhancement
programs in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New
York and Salt Lake City,
and the testing and implementation of an enhanced boarding process
in Atlanta.
The new West Coast collaboration complements Delta's East Coast
partnership with Danny Meyer's Union
Square Hospitality Group. Through its partnership with USHG, Delta
features seasonally rotating menus from Meyer's highly-acclaimed
portfolio of restaurants in the Delta One cabin on select
trans-Atlantic routes to Europe
and transcontinental flights between JFK and LAX/SFO.
Past rotations with USHG include the 2017 spring menu from cafes
at MoMA and 2017 winter menu from Maialino as well as the 2016 fall
menu from North End Grill, 2016 summer menu from Union Square
Events, 2016 spring menu from Union Square Cafe and 2016 winter
menu from Marta. The current 2017 summer menu is the "Best of Union
Square Hospitality Group", featuring customer favorites from past
menus.
In addition to partnering with Shook and Dotolo and Union Square
Hospitality Group, Delta also partners with Atlanta-based chef Linton Hopkins. The
chef-driven menus highlight the airline's industry-leading focus on
providing seasonally and regionally-inspired cuisine to
customers.
Delta in Los Angeles
Since 2009, Delta has been the fastest-growing carrier at LAX
and recently relocated to Terminals 2 and 3, the first step in its
$1.9 billion plan to modernize,
upgrade and connect Terminals 2, 3 and the Tom Bradley
International Terminal to create the Delta Sky Way at LAX. In
April, the airline launched daily nonstop service to
Washington–Reagan Airport – becoming the only airline to offer
flat-bed seats in the front cabin on that route – and Delta's joint
venture partner Virgin Australia began service five days per week
to Melbourne on a Boeing
777-300ER. Virgin Atlantic launched a third daily round-trip
flight on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner between LAX and
London-Heathrow this summer. In 2016, the airline
launched five daily flights from LAX to Denver International Airport, a key route for
business travelers in Los Angeles;
expanded the Delta Shuttle to include Los
Angeles-Seattle and
Seattle-San Francisco in addition to Los Angeles-San
Francisco; increased service to both New York-JFK and
Seattle to 10 daily flights; added
a third daily flight to Boston;
and launched Aspen service in
December. Delta offers more flights between Los Angeles and New
York than any other carrier.
About Delta
Delta Air Lines serves more than 180 million customers each
year. In 2017, Delta was named to Fortune's top 50 Most Admired
Companies in addition to being named the most admired airline for
the sixth time in seven years. Additionally, Delta has ranked No.1
in the Business Travel News Annual Airline survey for an
unprecedented six consecutive years. With an industry-leading
global network, Delta and the Delta Connection carriers offer
service to 335 destinations in 62 countries on six continents.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta
employs more than 80,000 employees worldwide and operates a
mainline fleet of more than 800 aircraft. The airline is a founding
member of the SkyTeam global alliance and participates in the
industry's leading transatlantic joint venture with Air
France-KLM and Alitalia as well as a joint venture with Virgin
Atlantic. Including its worldwide alliance partners, Delta offers
customers more than 15,000 daily flights, with key hubs and markets
including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles,
Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York-JFK and LaGuardia, London-Heathrow,
Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Tokyo-Narita.
Delta has invested billions of dollars in airport facilities,
global products and services, and technology to enhance the
customer experience in the air and on the ground. Additional
information is available on the Delta News Hub, as well as
delta.com, Twitter @DeltaNewsHub, Google.com/+Delta, and
Facebook.com/delta.
About Jon Shook and
Vinny Dotolo
James Beard award-winning
Los Angeles chefs Jon Shook and Vinny
Dotolo are the owners of animal, Son of a Gun, Trois Mec, Petit Trois, Jon & Vinny's,
Trois Familia and Kismet. They have
been credited with innovating and changing the dining scene in
Los Angeles through their
critically-acclaimed restaurants. Their partnership began over a
decade ago when they met in culinary school at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. In 2002, they
landed in Los Angeles and worked
at Chadwick for Benjamin Ford and Govind
Armstrong, which inspired them to launch their initial
catering company, Carmelized Productions, and eventually paved the
way for their own TV show on The Food Network. In the spring of
2008, they opened animal and then Son of a Gun in 2011. Shook and
Dotolo partnered with French chef, Ludo Lefebvre, and together they
opened the highly acclaimed Trois
Mec in 2013. The success of Trois
Mec inspired the opening of Petit Trois in 2014. Shook and
Dotolo opened Jon & Vinny's in 2015 and in that same year
opened Trois Familia in partnership
with Lefebvre, as their third collaborative restaurant together.
The group's newest addition is Kismet, which opened in January of
this year with Chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah
Hymanson.
Shook and Dotolo have received numerous nominations and awards
including Food & Wine's 2009 Best New Chef, StarChefs' 2008
Rising Star Chef, and nine James
Beard nominations including 2009's "Best New Restaurant" for
animal, 2011's "Best Chef Pacific", 2015's "Best New Restaurant"
for Petit Trois, "Outstanding Restaurant Design" for Jon &
Vinny's in 2016 and for Kismet in 2017, and "Best Chef West" in
2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
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SOURCE Delta Air Lines