Getting a Vanilla Coke at the Boston Logan Airport Johnny Rockets

The airport eating experience tends to involve an overpriced bagel sandwich and usually concludes with some combination of indignity, actual malice and bad iceberg lettuce. It's less like eating a meal than being chewed up by the corporate machine.

Therefore the rare opportunity to sit down at an airport restaurant and enjoy an actual meal is one to be relished. Such is the aim of the quaint-seeming, 1950s-style soda counter of Johnny Rockets at Boston's Logan Airport, which makes its employees don old-fashioned white uniforms and claims improbably to be the "home of the hamburger." White-tiled backsplash, red paper hats, made-to-order burgers and flavored sodas: it all seems so inviting. The perfect break from a long layover and fluorescent lights.

So, if one were interested in a flavored soda, for the sake of this example a "vanilla Coke," the process seems simple. Go to counter. Order drink. Perhaps you will have to repeat your request, since "vanilla Coke" may seem difficult for the young, red-and-white-clad hostess to understand. Perhaps, after paying $3, you are suprised to be handed a little blinky pager to indicate when your drink will be ready. Perhaps you will be slightly put off, thinking that the blinky pager is not in the spirit of the 1950s diner.

Five minutes is a long time to wait for food at an airport. It is a long time to wait for a cappuccino, it is a long time to wait for a cellophane wrapped sandwich, and it is a very long time to wait for a vanilla Coke. So, when the blinky pager finally alerts you that it is time to pick up your drink, you will probably expect it to be a nicely prepared-with-thought kind of affair.

Instead, what you will receive is a paper cup with two pumps of vanilla syrup in it.

A paper cup. With two pumps of vanilla syrup.

Further inquiries only generate a vague pointing gesture in the direction of the McDonald's-style soda machine in the corner followed by a low guttural noise that sounds like "Ehhhh."

How can Mr. Rockets sleep at night knowing that his namesake restaurant does things like this that strip the dignity of customers lulled by the unlikely promise of old-timey atmosphere at an airport? It preys on the soda fountain hopes of a hustled folk, then spits them out into the linoleum wasteland of the terminal with only a moderately tasty beverage.

This Johnny Rockets could never exist outside of an airport. Only such a transitory place could support a restaurant that so flamboyantly promises the best of the old while delivering the most mercantile of the new.

— Becca Dilley (becca at beccadilley dot com)