If you’ve ever been on a plane, chances are you have eaten a chicken breast so rubbery it could double as a squash ball, “nestling” in a sauce with Polyfilla consistency. To be fair to the caterers, dry cabin conditions and high-altitude pressure are not the best surroundings in which to serve up flavourful food. But, in recent years, airlines have supposedly revamped their menus to offer gourmet fare. British Airways even turned to Heston Blumenthal to improve its in-flight catering during the 2012 London Olympics. Has airborne dining really changed? To find out, we taste-tested some of the dishes you are likely to find on your plastic lap-tray this summer.
EasyJet, hot focaccia caprese
£4.50
It takes a special kind of moron to muck up a cheese toastie. Fortunately, in this instance, easyJet is not that moron. There is a nice herby tang to the rosemary focaccia, a hit of sweet tomato chutney and, while the mozzarella isn’t exactly spilling over the sides of the bread with generosity, that is not necessarily a bad thing for a dish you have to eat over a flimsy plastic tray.
8/10
EasyJet, Somerset cheddar cheese roll
£4.50
So dense is the bread that you could use the “malted sub roll” as an in-flight pillow. It is a bready Alcatraz incarcerating one slim slice of cheddar that has briefly been dabbed with “seasoned mayo” (presumably seasoned with air, for all the flavour it adds) and a “mixed-leaf salad” whose sparse scattering of shrivelled leaves looks more like some foliage has blown in through the window during prep than a deliberate garnish. The real flavour comes from the absolute lathering of sweet, Branstonny “onion marmalade”. Which is OK, but too little too late, really.
3/10
Norwegian, vegetable ratatouille
£25 for full meal service on long-haul economy
The ratatouille itself is fine: it is fairly rich and there are a good number of courgette and aubergine chunks. But the minuscule portion size is most definitely not OK. A tiny red splodge sits incongruously at the end of a tray packed with white basmati, looking almost like a catering accident. This is more “basmati tray with vegetable afterthought”.
5/10
Norwegian, beef in a creamy pepper sauce with garlic potatoes and rainbow carrots
£25 for full meal service on long-haul economy
You could pile half a dozen shoe-leathery in-flight steaks on top of each other and they still wouldn’t be as thick as this hefty wedge of braised chuck steak – undoubtedly the fattest hunk of meat I’ve ever seen in an airline meal (which, admittedly, isn’t saying much). The sauce is a touch bland and the carrots are nightmarish school-dinner fare, but add in some oily, garlicky potatoes and this is sort of OK.
5/10
Norwegian, American-style pancakes with blueberry sauce
£4 on short-haul flights.
In the future, when all fresh fruit has long since been driven to extinction by apocalyptic nuclear war and hens lay eggs that can double up as glow-in-the-dark nightlights, this is how pancakes and blueberry sauce will taste. Sickly, synthetic and really, really awful.
1/10
Malaysia Airlines, nasi lemak sambal shrimps and coconut rice
Included on economy flights
This dish’s bad points: the weird eggy disc that lurks inside a portion of coconut rice, and the fact that, as a breakfast option, this curry is likely to be a tad spicy for most western palates. There, however, end the downsides of an oily, aromatic, prawn-studded Malaysian curry that is so deliciously fishy it could easily make the menu of a decent restaurant. The lightly flavoured coconut rice is OK too, if a tad light on flavour. Genuinely a dish I’d like to eat again – and when it comes to airline food, that’s really saying something.
9/10
Malaysia Airlines, cherry pancakes and panna cotta
Included on economy flights
I wonder: does Malaysia Airlines know that you’re not meant to put panna cotta into the oven? Or did they think it could be improved by being turned into a warm puddle of cornfloury custard? Also, the curiously eggy, cherry compote-centred pancakes it comes with: what are they channelling here? Jammy omelettes? And how have they managed to make them look like the surface of a hostile alien planet? Still, there are some nice little blini-ish pancakes too, so it’s worth a couple of points.
2/10
Malaysia Airlines, chicken breast with Asian egg noodles
Included on economy flights
The chicken is not a success: it is accompanied by a glutinous sauce that tastes of nothing, but whose brown-ish colouring makes you wonder what they flavoured it with (dishwater? Melted slugs?). The noodles, however, are actually pretty good: lightly spiced and packed with more veg than a greengrocer’s. Shame about the chicken, though.
6/10
Virgin Atlantic, creamy mushroom farfalle bake
Included on economy flights
There are mushrooms, there is farfalle and it appears to have been baked (you can tell by the crispy fringes of the bows). But calling this dish “creamy” is a bit of a stretch. “Brown-ish” would be more apt. “Brown-ish and slimy”, even more so.
2/10
Virgin Atlantic, chicken teriyaki
Included on economy flights
This isn’t the most beautiful-looking chicken (it’s puffy and brown, like fried tofu). But while the teriyaki sauce is perhaps a tad soy-heavy, for in-flight catering it’s a solid effort. The sticky, sesame seed-studded rice is actually pretty nice, as are the Japanese-style veg (except for one mysterious ingredient: is that kelp? A rotten pepper?). Fairly inoffensive.
6/10
Virgin Atlantic, salted caramel Gü dessert
Included on economy flights
According to Virgin, it developed this dessert with Gü as an in-flight exclusive, but Tesco liked it so much, it decided to start stocking it. And, frankly, you can see why. It is phenomenally good. Once you’ve plunged your spoon through strata of squishy chocolate goop, there is a pool of gorgeous, liquidy salted caramel at the bottom. Is it cheating having a branded dessert? When it’s this good, who cares? Looks like there is such a thing as good airline catering, after all.
10/10
