Is great airport food taking off?

Airport food is always a sore point for me – when I have to fly, I make sure that I have some snacks with me in case I get the munchies and don’t want to be disappointed again by the bad offering available.

We recently flew to Toronto from Dublin and amongst the usual suspects, we discovered Nomad – a little café that claims to offer new healthy food and specialty coffee.

We have heard the claims before and I was extremely sceptical and didn’t have any expectations. To my very great surprise, the food was indeed good. The offerings are limited but cover most tastes and preferences.

As we were early, we opted for one of the breakfast/brunch options of avocado crush loaded toast – it was indeed loaded with a good amount of guacamole, two poached eggs and a guajillo chilli dressing sprinkled with mixed seeds on sourdough bread. The dressing added spicy note and it could compete with any café outside the airport.

Other options were nut butter and chia porridge with cacao nibs, nut crumble and maple syrup (the recipe was created by Jack O’Keeffe – a regular at Ireland AM TV), smoked salmon loaded toast came with peanut rayu by White Masau and a cucumber salsa and for the sweet tooth, you could have the chunky nut butter loaded toast with banana, raspberries and mixed seeds.

Lunch options weren’t too shabby either with a nacho bowl by Blanco Nino with guacamole and pico de gallo or aubergine salad with pulled tofu (no idea why they call it pulled as if to make it sound like pulled pork), chickpeas, tomatoes, onions and leaves (this is one of the vegan options).

In addition to the nacho box, you can also have a Mexican hot grain bowl which looked fantastic with sweet potato, green beans, wild rice and more. It looked so colourful that you just wanted to tuck in.

For people who didn’t want to sit down, take-away options included ready-made sandwiches that looked also very inviting and were stuffed to the rim, pastries or any of the normal offerings that can be taken away.

Packaging is 100% compostable – indeed sustainability seems to be at the core of Nomad.

Coffee is by Roasted Notes Coffee who source their coffee beans from small family-run farms and roasted in a micro roastery here in Ireland.

Indeed, Nomad is championing Irish produce with most of the ingredients coming from Dublin and surrounding areas including Green Saffron from Cork (most of these products are also available to buy).

We both loved the food and Mr T being a coffee connoisseur loved the coffee. We took some snacks with us on the flight.

In case you have to fly from Dublin, Nomad is located in Terminal 1 and opens from 5.30am in the morning.

We would go again if we have to take off from Dublin but let’s hope that Cork Airport schedules more flights to our preferred destinations.