Delta Partners with Los Angeles Chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo to Bring their Renowned Cuisine to the Skies

L.A.-based duo will develop new menu for select Delta One flights from LAX to JFK/DCA

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Jun 08, 2017, 10:00 ET

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 Partners with Los Angeles Chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo to Bring their Renowned Cuisine to the Skies

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.

SOURCE Delta Air Lines