So I’m in travel limbo here, waiting at Atlanta-Hartsfield on a connection that’s already delayed 90 minutes, which will mean I’ll be lucky to get to tonight’s high school game in time for the first pitch, but it did give me time for a proper lunch. I went to the Paschal’s full-service location in Terminal C, and by the depressed standard of airport food, it’s off the charts.

Paschal’s is an Atlanta institution, so applying my philosophy to always start with a signature dish when possible, I went with the fried chicken, getting sides of green beans and black-eyed peas. The dinner comes with a generic house salad and two mini-corn muffins for $9.95. The best part of the meal, unsurprisingly, was the corn muffins, made with stone-ground meal and little sugar, containing plenty of fat (I’m assuming butter, but it could have had some bacon fat mixed in). The fried chicken – a quarter-white, which was a small disappointment because I assumed it would be a quarter-dark – was perfectly cooked, not a bit dry, with a slightly salty crust that didn’t lose its crunch even after ten minutes. The black-eyed peas were delicious but I expected bits of salt pork or ham hock in the mix; the green beans were unremarkable. I also liked the sweet iced tea, even though I normally hate it because it’s too damn sweet. (I take my iced tea unsweetened with a squeeze of lemon.) This sweet tea was too damn sweet, but the flavor of the tea reminded me of Thai iced tea without the sweetened condensed milk. Total bill including a 20% tip was $15.20. I believe there is at least one other Paschal’s location, by the ticketing counters before security, and there may be more in other terminals.

My only real complaint is that the food took a long time to arrive, since airport restaurants tend to move quickly, but I suppose that’s the price of getting true fried chicken.