Airborne passengers are a captive audience – one that airlines have a unique opportunity to impress or alienate according to the quality of the food they serve. Good catering is known to lead to changes of allegiance between rival airlines, so why don’t they try harder to please? And why do they often fail dismally to get it right?
Whether we fly first class, business or economy, tourist class, most of us eat at least some of the in-flight rations we are offered. If we are too bored or restlessto read, work or sleep, we may pick at the tray put before us. If we set out for the airport many hours before take-off and missed a meal at home, or we are nervous about flying, we may devour every crumb. Either way, we complain about the food, and usually with good reason.
Airlines seem obsessed by fussy menus(and really need to address the problem of over-chilling foods). They should think more about foods and less about recipes. Instead of imagining that quantity equals quality, as though more courses means better meals, they need to learn that one good dish is preferable to half a dozen that are half-baked: a single ripe and tasty tomato pleases more than a bunch of lacklustre asparagus.
Simplicity is good, and good ingredients are vital. Elaboration, on the other hand, is dangerous, especially when chef and diner are not in adjoining kitchen and dining-room but many sky miles and hours apart. Food trays should not be so cold when presented to passengers that flavours and textures are severely muted and dulled. Bread rolls with arctic interiors, cheeses that are like plastic instead of soft and yielding, and cutlery that feels cold in the hand are unacceptable.
More money is spent on meals for first class and business passengers than for tourists to try to justify premium ticket prices. But bigger budgets are largely wasted on pretensions not better food (five course meals, printed menus, starched napery and other frills). No one is impressed.“If airlines want to show off to top-paying customers,” a jet-setting friend remarked, “why don’t they blow most of the allocated budget on giving us a dollop of caviar or terrine of foie gras, and follow that with a large, clean, green salad and cheese?” Why not indeed!
The rare in-flight meals people talk about with enthusiasm are notably straightforward. A platter of English cheeses, biscuits, spiced onion chutney, young celery stalks, grapes and freshly shelled walnuts. A breakfast of brioches, cherry jam, runny honey, plain creamy yoghurt, a basket of apricots, apples and bananas. A supper of Poliane bread, Isigny butter, cornichons and splendid charcuterie.
These favourite meals should be airline favourites, too, because they are ingredient-led not recipe-led. They require careful sourcing and good presentation, not the fancy cooking skills, reheating constraints, or finishes that make swanky dishes risky unless every stage is under the chef’s control.
Attempts to simplify are more evident in tourist class catering. The move is towards light meals rather than full-scale menus, with no more than a sweet bite offered on short-haul morning and afternoon flights, and a protein packed sandwich or pie, plus a piece of fresh fruit and a tablet of chocolate at midday or in the evening. This trend is to be applauded – providing the quality is right. A cottonwool bread roll and the cheapest factory-farmed chicken will not do. If the budget will not run to better chicken, why not replace the soggy roll with wholemeal bread and ditch the chicken for a flavoursome filling of good eggs, watercress and good mayonnaise?
Cut-price operators are dispensing with all complimentary refreshments, choosing to sell foods from on-board cafeterias instead. The pity is that some seem to stock only heavily processed junk foods. More enlightened carriers point to a brighter future. Song, a Delta subsidiary operating internal flights in the US, has been singled out by several friends for its offers generous and appetising boxes of organic salad leaves, tomatoes, feta cheese and pleasant salad dressing. Costing $8, this is a simple and decently priced solution.
Until more airlines get their catering right, taking your own provisions may be the best bet. My picnics more often rely on good shopping than cooking, witness a recent airborne lunch of mini-baguette, split and filled with potted shrimps, lemon and black pepper, with a punnet of cherries to follow. On another occasion, when I managed to find the time to cook as well as juggle all the other things that needed doing before going away, I packed myself and travelling companions a flask of iced lovage vichyssoise, veal meatballs the size of marbles, some spicy grilled chicken wings, sticks of cucumber, sprays of cherry tomatoes, and fingers of sticky ginger cake.
Of course it would be nice not to have to go through all this performance to be certain you could get something worth eating on board or at the airport.
British airports abound with shops selling food gifts but there was nothing suitable for passengers to unzip and eat in-flight until this spring. Then a take-away service was launched by Caviar House Seafood Bars. popular venues for those able to countenance, say, a few oysters and champagne before embarkation. They now sell triangles of grainy bread, excellent French butter, half a lemon, two or three slices of smoked salmon and a salad leaf garnish, plus a square of 70% chocolate, packed in a box for £11.50. Not cheap but good to eat. Prawn and lobster versions cost £15 and £30 respectively.
It has been a dream of mine to This brings me to an idea I have nurtured for some time, a project I might take on were I not trying to earn my crust as a writer, to set up the deli-traiteurs we badly need at our airports. I see these shops as un-intimidating versions of Fortnum & Mason, Peck, Fauchon or Dean & Deluca, devoted to selling not posh food but real, unequivocally delicious, food, where travellers can create their own picnic package.
In addition to changing daily specials, the range of delectables would, of course, always include breads of good character; dry cured ham complete with its proper quota of fat, carved to order in jagged slices from the bone; traditional potted meats, pasties and pies; cold roast and grilled vegetables; properly matured unpasteurised cheeses; local strawberries in season that smell and taste of strawberries, and much more.
The foods would be ultra fresh. Service would be fast, friendly and knowledgeable. Prices would be realistic not greedy. I think it is a good idea. I think it could work. Where are the food-loving entrepreneurs to make it work?
