QF11 today was boarding through gate 9, and conveniently placed on the way to gate 9 is a WH Smith store, so I ducked in to grab a copy of Vanity Fair for the plane. Which I didn’t end up reading as it was a month old and I thought it was irrelevant. So I left it on the plane. Anyway, slightly off topic.
Once I’d paid for the magazine that I didn’t bother to read, we made our way through to gate 9, where a scrum had formed to get through passport check. Not entirely sure why they didn’t have a premium queue, and every one of the private security guards checking passports, who reminded me all too much of the goons Lufthansa hire to check boarding passes, were dealing with parents and a bunch of kids. This would ordinarily be fine except the parents were all over the place, not paying attention to the children running around causing mayhem for 300+ people trying to get to the gate to board the aircraft. Eventually, after someone had told them to pull their kids into line, we got through and made our way to the boarding gate. Just as we had arrived at the scrum, boarding of the flight was called and once at the boarding gate we presented our boarding passes, and gleefully marched on to the plane, where I found myself sitting in 4A.
After settling in, the FA came and introduced himself, although I wasn’t necessarily a fan of his addressing me by my first name – this is generally reserved for friends and acquaintances, not FAs on a QF flight to Los Angeles. I’m still not sure I care for this shaking of hands business either after having made a few flights in F on QF. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to say I almost prefer LH F, if it weren’t for the ordinary catering in LH F and the unreliable nature of their car service to take you from aircraft on arrival to the FCT in FRA when connecting to another flight. My attitude is, if you can’t provide it, don’t say you will because people get irritated when you under-deliver. I digress. Continuing.
Where was I? Ah, yes. QF F. Right-o. Well once I had settled in, taken a few photos and re-acquainted myself with the functions of the A380 F suite, the FA brought around a glass of the Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé, which was a rather satisfactory drop, with some olives and almonds. Owing to a nut allergy, I sent him away with the almonds.
The aircraft pushed back from the gate precisely on time, and we made our way out to the runway for take-off. I watched the skycam during take-off, which I always get a kick out of, and before long we were levelling off. Inbound arrival cards were distributed by the CSM, who wished us all a pleasant journey, and then left to do whatever it is that she did during that flight. The FA distributed menus, and I was elated to see that the tasting menu was available on this flight.
The tasting menu consisted of:
Spanner crab and harissa tartlet
Ibérico jamón crostini with date and ricotta
Cream of leek and potato soup
Yellowfin tuna with Moroccan eggplant
Nyonya style curry of ling with crispy eschalots, snow peas and jasmine rice
Or
Rockpool bar & grill style crumbed free range pork with St John’s carrots, potato and cabbage gratin with choice of fennel jam, hot English mustard or seeded mustard
Salad of baby cos, radicchio and friese with palm sugar vinaigrette
Chocolate and orange pot with almond biscuits
Selection of three seasonal cheeses served with accompaniments
Cacao hand made chocolates
The crew were very kind in allowing me to swap the yellowfin tuna with a roast capsicum, feta and artichoke salad with balsamic dressing from the main lunch menu, due to the fact that I am allergic to seafood. As a result, I didn’t bother to eat the spanner crab amuse bouche, but I did appreciate the Spanish ham amuse bouche because the flavours were well balanced. The soup was also good, it was silky and smooth but it was a little bit on the bland side for my liking. The capsicum salad was served in a rather generous portion and again was quite enjoyable. The pork was really fantastic – not dry at all, nicely cooked – and the carrots and gratin served as accompaniments really added to the highlight of the dish, the pork. That being said, I didn’t bother with the salad, as it didn’t really appeal and I was rather getting full at this point so decided to leave room for dessert. Just when I thought they were going to give me a break from eating, out came the dessert. The chocolate flavour in the chocolate pot was really pungent, but the orange segments, which were laden across the top with the biscuit, cut through the richness, which made for a very pleasurable dessert. Finally, the cheese platter arrived, and I was so full that I didn’t really even manage to finish it, I just ate the Brie, the cheddar and the fig with a glass of dessert wine.
The salad:
The pork main:
At last, the lunch service was over. And I felt so full, not to mention guilty, for having eaten all that food. When I envisage a tasting menu, I imagine a very small helping of each course so that you get to experience many things on a menu. I personally feel as though the portion sizes of the courses of the tasting menu may be fractionally too large. But that would be my only criticism of the overall experience.
After the meal, I finished watching Arbitrage – which I found really irritating being that the term arbitrage in the title was more metaphorical that I would have liked. I watched it due to the fact that I am studying finance at university. None of the major themes had anything to do with the finance industry; the kind of only formed the context in which the storyline operated, which meant it wasn’t really to my taste. All in all I would give it a 2 out of a possible 5 stars. Not that this has anything to do with the TR, but anyway.
Once I had finished watching that, I decided, dressed in full first class garb (pyjamas) to walk around the plane, I felt as though I needed to move around a bit after the tasting menu. I walked upstairs through J and Y+, and everyone looked at me like I was like class d-bag. Then I went down the stairs and walked up to F through Y. After seeing the rear-most Y cabin, I hastened my pace back to the comfort of 4A. ‘How do people do it?’ I pondered, as the FA fetched me another glass of rosé.
I settled in to watch a few episodes of ‘Come Fly with Me’ – ironically, the episode about the snooty FA in F class on the plane which gave me a severe case of the giggles. After that I was feeling like I should try and get some sleep, so while I had the FA perform the turn down service for my bed, I went and availed myself of the Payot amenities in the F bathrooms. I really rather like Payot amenities, they’re fantastic. Once I returned to my suite, I took half a stilnox (couldn’t believe it when my doctor prescribed me Stilnox) and promptly drifted off to sleep. My sleepy state lasted for approximately 5 hours before some quite strong turbulence shook me awake, then I decided to just watch movies for a couple of hours before the breakfast service. I ended up watching ‘The Bourne Legacy’ which was quite watchable and I’d probably rate that a 3.5 out of 5.
As the credits began to roll on the movie, I headed off to the bathroom and got changed into my landing outfit while the FA took away my bedding and converted the bed back into a seat, and set up the table for me so I could edit some of my photos on my computer that I had taken the previous day. However, not even 10 minutes had passed while on the MacBook and the FA had come to take my order for breakfast. My choices were:
Organic scrambled eggs on toasted brioche with free range pork sausages, grilled mushrooms and tomato ragout
Baked French toast with Serrano jamón, cheese and herbs served with braised beans
Vanilla and buttermilk pancakes with apple compote and mascarpone cream
Various types of bakery and juice were available as accompaniments to the main hot selection, and I elected to have some white toast with butter and vegemite and a glass of peach nectar with the scrambled eggs. I didn’t really eat the scrambled eggs due to the fact that I don’t eat eggs, the other things available on the plate I liked. While I watched breakfast, I watched some of ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’, but couldn’t manage to persevere with it until the end so cut it off about half way through due to my wanting to play around with the photos I had taken on the new camera.
I sat for a little bit, playing with the different hues and effects I could use to make my ordinary photo-taking skills look a little less ordinary, but I fear this may have been in vain. Before long, the captain asked the crew to prepare the cabin for landing, which meant abandoning my photo-editing mission. As we got closer to landing, the CSM came around thanking us all for travelling and inquiring as to whether or not our journey was an enjoyable one. I exchanged pleasantries with her for a bit before she was called to take her seat before landing into LAX.
The flight made a smooth landing into LAX approximately 45 minutes prior to schedule, and we pulled up to a remote gate, which was less painful than it sounds. First passengers were naturally allowed off first, and then escorted to a bus to take us to the terminal. We were surprised to have been allocated our own bus to take us across, which we all joked about in a convivial manner until we reached TBIT’s immigration/ customs dungeon. And so began a bit of a walk to the immigration counters, followed by a bit of a wait in the line at immigration. But the wait could have been worse I am assured. Once we had our right fingers, then thumb followed by left fingers then thumb, scanned and our picture taken, we collected our bags which were waiting for us to be collected, and then we went through customs. We declared food and prescription medication, but they didn’t even scan our bags or check what these were, which I felt was kind of night in line with the USA’s reputation of being the land of the free and
the paranoid, but anyway.
We were received in California by temperatures around 7 Celsius, but unfortunately I had packed all my jumpers which was a real pain as I was feeling the need for knitwear a bit. We left the terminal and went to wait for the shuttle bus to take us to the Hilton at LAX. And that requires another post, I am afraid!
