BNE-SYD, dinner flight on 7th Feb on 737:
This time I was finally lucky! First, I love how Brissy has that extra entrance for status PAX which gets you away from all the riff raff and straight into the lounge area. Makes such a huge difference to the whole airport experience.
Then the Business lounge was near empty but still as good as ever. Lots of hot choices, there were chicken wings (super tasty but I always struggle getting enough meat off those bones so generally not a huge fan but most other guests seemed to love them), a lentil and cauliflower soup and pasta bolognaise. Had the latter not long ago in the Sydney lounge and it was WAY tastier in Brisbane. And yes, I enjoyed my cider (and the sweets too
).
Luckily, the flight itself would be really good (besides the usual $hitfight at the gate which Qantas just never gets right it seems) as well. Very senior and experienced crew as is typical for Qantas, this time in the "friendly and welcoming" version. To my delight, meal options were a 'Blade steak in mushroom sauce' besides the typical salad option (is it always 'prosciutto salad' which consists mainly of baby spinach leaves these days? It has been on all my recent flights from memory...).
Needless to say, I had the steak and was conscious that blade is not exactly a superior cut. They had slow cooked it down to totally tenderise the sinews to a glibbery fat (similar to beef cheeks I found) but it was still good enough for a 1 hour flight I found. The highlight though was the Grenache (Krondorf Founders View) which was excellent and goes for $18 at
Dan Murphy's so I'll head over there for a few ones tomorrow
Then came the strangest thing- the very caring and proactively refilling crew offered the 1/3 emptied bottles to their J class passengers. So I got handed a 2/3 bottle of that yummy Grenache and the lady across the aisle a half bottle of the Shaw & Smith Sav B. I never had this before on any airline- does this happen regularly? It always pains me watching the crews pouring away those wines, especially if it's a nice drop (or champagne- I had to endure the sight of almost full bottles of Dom going into the drain which is a sight that tears me apart
).
So I really loved this crew and am happy to report that the Grenache tastes as nice on the ground as it does in the air
As many times before, when Qantas does something well, it does it
really well. If not, then it really
really sucks.