October 28, 2010

Plane food: Emirates

Agnes emirates, flights, travel

I used to be okay with flying, but the older I get the more I dislike it. I’m not at the Valium stage yet, so I try and give myself things to look forward to in an attempt to distract myself – oooh movies! ooooh going somewhere different! ooooh plane food! Yes, I look forward to getting plane meals! Sad, huh?

(Side note: I asked Alastair to tell me some cool things about flying. He responded, “Everything’s cool about flying! The fact that you’re thousands of metres above ground and supported by mechanical wings is amazing.”

Yeaaaaaaah…. that’s the exact part I don’t like.)

This trip, I booked us on Emirates on fairly cheap tickets… which might explain why we flew:

Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur to Dubai
Dubai to London (arriving 25 hours after we left Melbourne!)

And on the way home:

London to Dubai
Dubai to Singapore
Singapore to Melbourne

There were six flights altogether, and two meals were served on each flight. One was a full meal, and the other one was a snack, or lighter option. So that’s twelve meals we were served (I originally typed twenty-four meals.. maths fail). But don’t worry, I won’t bore you with all of them!

Let’s start on a positive note.

The Good:

Overall, the food on Emirates was pretty good (relatively speaking anyway). And I was very excited to see that they had cheese and crackers, little chocolates AND little desserts! Lots of airlines seem to skip the little desserts now, and hand out ice creams instead – I’ll bet it’s much cheaper, but it’s just not the same.

Look! Dessert! This was a chocolate banana streusel with vanilla sauce. It was really nice. Underneath the streusel topping was a chocolate and banana cake.

And another dessert… blueberry cheesecake with raspberry coulis and whipped cream

I’ll just show you one more dessert – this was a blackberry crumble with raspberry sauce. Oh my gosh, this one was particularly good. In the middle of the cake was a big blob of blackberries! I also liked the sugary, buttery topping. 😀

On the flight from Dubai to London, we received afternoon tea – sandwiches and a scone with a little packet of clotted cream and jam. The scone was served warm, and I was quite taken with the little packet of clotted cream.

This snack could’ve turned out terribly, but for some reason I remember liking it! Perhaps I was hungry?? The mini baquette was filled with chicken tandoori, and the croissant with coleslaw.

And this! This was the best meal I ate during all those flights. This was the fish option on the way to Singapore (the two options were chicken or fish on all the flights). The fish had been poached and topped with a sweet chilli and lime sauce and served with egg fried rice. It was just good: the fish was tender and moist, the sauce was tasty – not really spicy at all, but a bit sweet and a bit tangy.

The second best meal was the butter chicken, served with carrot rice and dal makhani. It could’ve been spicier, but it was nice to have a bit of curry.

The BAD

Now on to the bad. There were certainly some low points.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a good plane breakfast, and this was no exception. This was the mixed grill, which included a grilled beef steak, veal sausage, sauteed button mushrooms, roasted chat potatoes and a grilled tomato. It wasn’t inedible, but it was fairly bad. The other option was a Swiss cheese omelette. Plane omelettes- shudder.

This was the other part of the afternoon tea where we received the scone. These were reception sandwiches and a mixed dried fruit cake. The sandwiches were horrid and dry and I couldn’t eat them. I didn’t bother touching the fruit cake.

Another breakfast, this time a continental one. A croissant, which was average, and a “breakfast pastry” aka a cold apple turnover. It might’ve been okay warm, but being cold, it was tasteless and hard.

I don’t know why anyone could possibly think this would be a good thing to serve. This was a chicken tikka wrap, and the “soft tortilla wrap” went to paste in my mouth.

And finally, another continental breakfast – another croissant and breakfast pastry. I don’t know what was in that pastry, but I just about gagged on one small bite. I thought it was disgusting, but Alastair finished off mine after he had eaten his one!

It does seem like the food on Emirates was of mixed quality, but like I said earlier – it was mostly relatively okay. I do admit that I have low expectations of plane food, and I’m easily pleased with cheese, crackers and mini desserts. Yep, it doesn’t take much to keep me happy!

Check out these posts for more plane food.