From paella to peantus, airline food at its best (and worst)
That tiny little bag of honey-roasted, lightly salted peanuts - perhaps nothing satisfies hunger more at 30,000 feet than this consistently delicious little culinary delight.
And if you can’t taste the sarcasm that sentence was heavily saturated in, then perhaps you’ve eaten one too many fast-food meals from the airport food court.
In the face of the near-constant talk about all of the “major cutbacks” the airlines are facing, I couldn’t help thinking about these cutbacks and most specifically, about how there have been serious “cut backs” on the old in-flight meal.
I thought it was interesting when I read that on this day in 1927, “The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight are introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris.” So, we’ve had a little over 80 years to perfect and enjoy the in-flight meal.
How do you think that is working out for us?
I went on to read about the gourmet meals which are served to the British airline Silverjet’s business-class travelers — meals designed by the well-known London restaurant Le Caprice.
Um, yes please!?
German airline Lufthansa says that they are introducing special gourmet meals with a “Euro 2008″ theme, what that means exactly, I have no idea — but admit it…it sounds good, doesn’t it? Celebrity chefs from Euro 2008 host nations Switzerland and Austria have been called in by the airline to create meals for first-class and business-class travelers on long haul flights.
Again, please tell me where I sign up.
Incidentally, there really is a website for anything and everything nowadays, airline meals being no exception to that rule. AirlineMeals.net claims to be “the world’s first and leading website about nothing but airline food” and that very well maybe true. There may be no better (or other) source for information on say, crew meals or airline meals served during the 70’s. This is useful stuff, people.
Now granted, I’ve not done a lot of international travel. I’ve also not flown business-class extensively. However, neither have I flown economy-class exclusively. I freely confess that there is probably a lot of good that I am missing. That being said, from what I’ve seen, and read, and judging by what others tell me, I don’t think that I’m that far off the mark when I have gotten unreasonably excited the very few times I’ve seen a caesar salad or a grilled cheese sandwich coming my way.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”, I gleefully ask aloud as I lower my tray table.
Most of the time, it’s safe to say, we are all generally quite accustomed to much more…measely mousey modest offerings. So, it’s no wonder that I can’t help but ask — how on earth did we get stuck with stale peanuts and $5 cans of Budweiser while many European airlines serve their customers real food?
What’s the best airline meal you’ve ever been served? Which carrier served it? Tell us all about it in the comments!
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4 Responses to “From paella to peantus, airline food at its best (and worst)”
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I’ve travelled quite a bit overseas. However, most economy travel in Europe is as bad as US travel except in the US we do have some customer service standards. In Europe I’ve encountered rude, unhelpful and put off service in economy. I dont’ really care about improving first class/business class because honestly, the most inconvenience and poorly managed customers are sitting in the cheap seats.
P.S. best meal was continental, US First Class. They served me real silver including a knife and forkk and a real glass of champagne. So if you have enough money you are GIVEN the weapon.
I’ve had good meals in the past from air pakistan and kathay pacific (like the way you can order eastern or western style meals). I also remember dining in style a looooong time ago on boac.
I disagree with Chantel about economy service standards in Europe. Actually flight attendantds help customers store the luggage (it’s a no-no in the US), and meals are served on any flights longer than 45 minutes. I travel extensively (United, US Airways in the US; Swiss, Alitalia, Malev, SAS in Europe) and I must say coach class service is better in Europe (seats are just as uncomfortable though)
china airways had good food in economy (pity i did not understand the comic on the audiochannel my fellow passengers were in tears)
most of the national airlines tend to be oke, alitalia had gone fron italian style to italian bad, staff that jump ship before the “canceled ” message is shown on the screen, stuff like that, The budget airlines always combine per per use food and drink at incredible prices with products you need to read the label to guess what it is.
Staff behaviour can differ, klm has a lot of stuck up flight attendents, i actually watched a alitalia pilot hit on the female passengers once.