Foodies have long disparaged airports as the ultimate culinary desert, what with bland, greasy grub at stratospheric prices—who’d risk missing a flight for that? Enter Daily—a locavore’s dream, but with something of a catch: It's at Newark Airport.

Claiming to be the first farm-to-terminal restaurant with a—you guessed it—daily rotating menu, Daily is part of a massive renewal at Newark’s Terminal C under the watch of OTG management, which operates restaurants and shops at major hubs, including New York’s LaGuardia, Philadelphia, and Houston. The $120 million renovation is bringing more than 50 new restaurants and bars to United’s stronghold in the northeast by early 2017, many with impressive pedigrees: Alex Stupak’s Tacquila, offering tacos and 200 varieties of tequila; a French bistro, Saison, from Alain Ducasse’s restaurant group; Little Purse, Top Chef contender Dale Talde’s take on an Asian noodle and dumpling bar; and even an outpost of former punk rock mecca CBGB.

Indeed, the vibe here is more Hudson Valley than Hudson News.

But Daily is something else entirely—hauling in fresh produce, meat, and fish for an ever-changing, 100 percent seasonal menu. That adds an additional layer to the already daunting task of managing an airport restaurant in today’s post-9/11 world, where all employees have to pass a background check, take security training, and go through the checkpoint just to get to work.

I got a glimpse of just how challenging during a recent tasting at the restaurant: one of the first things you notice is the cutlery. It looks normal enough, but upon closer inspection the fork is metal, the knife is plastic—yes, the rule banning knives on planes also applies to the secure side of the airport. In the kitchen, the chefs’ knives are tethered to the counter; each has to be logged in and out, and airport inspectors make frequent appearances to check that none has gone astray.

Inside, the vibe is more Hudson Valley than Hudson News. As I sampled, chef Matt Jennings provided the provenance for the various ingredients: A silky amuse-bouche, for example, comprised foie gras from a farm in Ferndale, cream and butter from Ronnybrook Dairy Farm in Ancramdale, and table grapes from Buzzard Crest Vineyards, all in upstate New York, along with fresh juniper berries from Eva’s Garden in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Farms from three states contributed to the juicy, hickory-smoked Daily Burger: the beef and the bourbon maple flavoring both hailed from the Empire State; the bacon from Nodine's Smokehouse in Connecticut, and cheddar cheese from Cabot, Vermont. Other entrées included five-spiced chicken, Maitake mushroom and farro, and togarashi flank steak. (Admittedly, the seasonal aspect can sometimes get extreme: this week, for example, airport diners are getting truffles sprinkled on specialties in a nod to New York’s White Truffle festival; some $600,000 worth of the prized commodity was trucked into Terminal C, and the chefs reportedly created quite a stir as the moved through the concourses with baskets of the stuff.)

But this is an airport, after all, and most diners will be on their way to somewhere else. So how to enjoy all this without obsessively watching the clock? OTG’s solution was to equip every restaurant seat in the terminal with a scanner that reads your boarding pass and keeps track of your flight via an individual iPad. Thus, the kitchen knows how much time you’ve got; and it also keeps fliers updated on boarding times and flight delays. The tablet is loaded with menus for touch-screen ordering, and you can also use it to play games, check your email, or read the news. When you’re done, it lets you settle the tab, too—and you can choose to pay with United miles instead of cash. (A fall ratatouille soup on the Daily menu, with squash and heirloom tomato broth, would set you back $12.00—or 1,500 miles.)

Is this the airport terminal dining of the future? If so, it can’t come a moment too soon. Yet another airport survey released last week panned Newark Airport as one of the country’s worst airports, near the very bottom, which, as usual, was claimed by New York LaGuardia.