Friday, April 23, 2010

Airline Food

These days, most airlines either do not serve food, or only offer overpriced snack-food type garbage or a cold soggy sandwich wrapped in plastic. The last time we flew, Mr Minx and I had to cobble together meals from the selection of slightly-less-overpriced packaged snack items at the airport gift shop. (The time before, on a trip to LA, we ate food from an airport restaurant, got food poisoning, and lost 2 days of our 5-day trip.) Back when everyone did get a hot meal, it was nothing to write home about, being the 30,000-foot equivalent of a Lean Cuisine - tough meat, flavorless sauce, gummy potatoes. But once upon a time, at least on British Airways, food was actually pretty decent.

When I was reminiscing about scones recently, I dug out the old shredded Harrod's bag full of memorabilia from that first trip to the U.K. My mother saved *everything* - from itineraries to bus tickets. And the menus from our first trans-Atlantic flights.


On the overnight flight to London we were served a three-course dinner and a Continental breakfast. On the way home we had a four course lunch and a tea service. If I remember correctly, all of the food was quite tasty. There have always been stories about bad airplane food, so I'm thinking that BA was quite the anomaly.

Has anyone else experienced a good meal while flying? Which airline, in which era? :) And don't say first class, because for that kind of $, the food had better be good.

2 comments:

Kristine said...

I remember BA was good. And I had some really good meals in Southeast Asia, but can't remember which airlines. Just remember thinking how much better their food was than the US airlines. (Used to work for a college in admissions that sent me there a few times to recruit.) But I do miss peanuts.

Jojo said...

I used to love BA food, but last time I went back to the UK it had gone down hill a bit. The last good airline food I had was AirFrance - Baguette + Brie + Red Wine = HAPPY! Not sure if you have seen this letter to Virgin complaining about the food - but it is funny!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin-the-worlds-best-passenger-complaint-letter.html