BNE-SYD dinner flight last night. After such an amazing flight on the outbound, of course I would have to get hit by Qantas' worst on the way back. Part of the crew grumpy, the other one disengaged but at least trying, this flight was off to a bad start. As mentioned before, I am intolerant to fish and seafood and have one proper food allergy which is Walnuts. I pretty much eat everything else but Qantas has a remarkable ability to make my life hell on for me on every third or so flight. My mood went downhill when I realized that the hot choice as ever so often was fish. Not even nice fish- it was just called simply 'White Fish' and when the guest in the row in front of me asked what fish it was exactly, the steward couldn't answer. It turned out to be a big plock of white fish meat that came with a cold salsa of some sort and steamed spinach. Yikes, even if I could eat fish!
And, to make matters worse, the salad was a Cesar salad though at least the steward confirmed it didn't have anchovies in it. That was because it wasn't really a proper Cesar salad in that it came with a blue cheese dressing
and had, you might have guessed it, walnuts in it. I almost suffocated by accidentally swallowing a tiny sliver of it but luckily it must have been a really small piece. The salad was further spoilt with two other unnecessary ingredients, namely far too many parsley leaves and, Qantas' favorite, half a kilo of celery. Now, I use both the latter in my own cooking but in tiny amounts and see both as ingredients to use rather sparingly so not to overbear the taste of the meal. Qantas seems to not think much of those subtleties and it was not the first time that an innocent salad turned out as a 'Celery-Parsley-Rocket' salad which didn't have any of these in its name.
As the red I had the Qantas-labeled special edition '30 years of Qantas frequent flyer' Cabernet Sauv which was entirely unremarkable and I was glad not having ordered any of these on Epiqure the week before. I finished off this unspectacular meal which I barely touched with a double of Scotch, at least that one never fails to deliver
Finally, and admittedly off topic, I luckily flew from Brisbane where I was totally amazed by the renovated lounge area with the direct security access for priority passengers. I had the most lovely Mexican dish with grilled chicken there in the lounge and hence would not be left all too hungry by the awful food on this flight. They also have my most beloved Orchard Crush cider on tab there, that alone finds its way to my heart instantly
Just allow me to share the amazing lounge dish which was prepared individually for every order. Just amazing and it also tasted really awesome with quite a bit of kick even!