American Eats: Colorado. Chick-fil-A, Concourse B, Denver International Airport
I can’t say that I am a fan of Denver International Airport. Not that I think anybody truly is. The best mark that most people would probably give Denver is “Well, at least it’s not O’Hare.”
More than once, I connected through Denver on the way home. On three occasions, I was on red-eye flights that landed early in Denver; once from Anchorage and twice from Honolulu. Each one of those times, I made a beeline for the one place I could count on at DIA: Chick-fil-A.
I don’t really sleep on planes. It’s just not a skill that I have ever really mastered. Sure, I’ll doze off for twenty minutes or so. But I never really get anything that resembles good sleep. Once you bound off a seven-hour overnight flight and now find yourself wide awake in the middle of the morning, you generally are looking for two things; a hot meal, and caffeine.
Caffeine is hard to come by in Denver. As someone who does not drink coffee, my caffeine options are quite limited because the news stand or book store outlets there do not sell soda. At all. The only place at the airport to get a soda is at a restaurant. It makes no sense and I don’t understand it, but that’s the way it is.
Again, like a beacon of light, there is a Chick-fil-A.
Look, most fast food breakfast isn’t that great. There are, realistically, only two viable options at most airports: McDonald’s or whatever bagel place happens to be there. Few airports have CFA; fewer have one that is open for breakfast. Mercifully, Denver has one of those.
The breakfast order to get at Chick-fil-A is simple: Chicken, Egg and Cheese Biscuit, hash brown, Coke Zero with no ice.
Is Chick-fil-A the most exciting meal in Colorado? Probably not, no. But the joy of fast food is that it can bring comfort and normalness to times in our lives when we are stressed or we are annoyed. And that, more than anything else, is what Chick-fil-A at DIA is to me.