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It was probably one of the worst meals I’ve eaten since the nuns started checking every morsel at school lunch. There was meat of a color that should never exist in nature, lurking – inexplicably – in pickle juice. For starters there was a salad, five bruised leaves (I counted them), a halved, bloodless cherry tomato, a small bottle of set dressing. Bread as appetizing as a foam scrubber. Did I wrinkle my offended nose? No, I ate it all. I was on a plane.
As soon as I pass through the departure lounge at the airport, my standards drop. Pret seems like the ultimate destination in this strange nowhere. But even this lack of judgement seems picky as soon as I board the plane.
I’m an unabashed food snob at heart. No excuses: why not be picky about what you pay for with your precious money and put into your precious body? But that changes as soon as the seatbelt sign lights up. Rather than worrying about whether my meat is organic or my balsamic the real Modena thing, I hoover up whatever comes off the trolley: crooked croissants on Ryanair or EasyJet’s infamous cheese and ham “toasties” – soggy loofahs the temperature of molten lava. There are those who come prepared: well-travelled friends with their own soda bread, smoked salmon, lemon and capers or the fixings for crispy sandwiches. (That saltiness is no accident: the flavour is killed by the air. That’s perhaps why, when I was still drinking on flights, I always succumbed to the umami bomb of Bloody Marys.)
There’s no way I’m bringing my own food. First, I know I’ll feel like a young school trip all over again and I’ll finish my packed lunch before takeoff. And second, meals and snacks are served at a deliberate pace, especially on long-haul flights. The pace is designed to keep people compliant, and in masses, crammed together with toddlers kicking around in the seats and charmers reclining the seats the whole time.
So I put myself in the hands of the catering companies, fully expecting that whatever arrives will be pretty dismal, even in the upper classes. Ingredients don’t respond well to the processes required for air-transported food, and because of the lower humidity in cabins than in most deserts, taste and smell are so negatively affected that dishes prepared with up to 11 percent salt and sugar still taste and smell like stew. But I’ll still be waiting feverishly for the trolley to roll, real Stockholm syndrome.
I have been lucky enough to have taken several first class flights over the years. BA, where there is a strange half-shaded bar that never seems to close, a shiny, modular version of the bar in The Shining – The Wonderful World of Madnessequipped with Styrofoam muffins and palate-shredding chips. Emirates, which had filet mignon, lobster and white burgundy, and the mate was so drunk he couldn’t find his way out of the cabin spa – yes, spa – and thought he was going to die when we arrived at a stopover in Dubai. (That wasn’t the experience that made me stop drinking on flights. This story is about a flight to Vegas.)
It was great fun, but the filet mignon was an unyielding taupe blob, the lobster was disguised as a crab stick. Add caviar on top and the pig is still lipstick. You’d think an airline that serves 77 million meals a year would have this down to a fine art, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I loved every moment.
Of course, there were strange pleasures: a surprisingly edible calzone on one of the budget airlines; cheese and biscuits even if they had never heard of a Jacob’s cracker; microwaved curry even though it risked being unpopular with fellow passengers. All of this is based on very personal experience, of course; I have not experienced the kind of “haute cuisine” offering that major airlines offer in collaboration with Michelin-starred chefs: Neil Perry of Qantas, Ishikawa Hideki of Japan Airlines or Carlo Cracco, coincidentally, for Singapore Airlines. Air France has a dazzling firmament, including Anne-Sophie Pic, the most awarded chef in the world.
But even if the names are in bold, I’m skeptical and fairly certain that the bread will be pliable, the pasta will be useless (they’re often made about 12 hours before departure) and that the vegetables, despite lip service to the trend toward healthier eating, will be just a step away from soup.
I don’t know why they bother, since most of us eat and enjoy everything in the air. Bring it all on: dusty chocolate, stiff little sandwiches, rubbery eggs, and bacon that looks like it has a yeast infection. Will it be “good”? Don’t make me laugh – I have a mouth full.
Marina O’Loughlin is a writer, editor and restaurant critic. This is the second of four summer columns
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