Qantas Business Class meals & menus

[FlyingKangaroo]

Not sure I agree that the naming is pretentious, but my background is Italian so I find the tone of the post a bit culturally insensitive tbh regardless of the point being made

No insensitivity intended -- for me, the issue is that using any word regardless of origin that isn't likely to be understood by most people is likely to confuse people, which may make them feel embarrassed and thus it comes across as elitist/pretentious. The point I think is to make the menu accessible to people to understand.

My background is primarily Nordic, which isn't exactly a region most airlines are going to run to for culinary inspiration, but if they did, yes, I would consider it "pretentious" to use e.g., the Swedish word for meatballs that most people won't know or understand, especially on a route unrelated to Sweden.

Now, if "polpette" were on the menu for Perth to Rome, I'd feel differently (though a descriptor in English might still be helpful).

 

[RooFlyer]

And as we'd say in Toronto "What about them leafs?" I honestly wonder what customers are meant to make of this. I couldn't even see any dressing on the plate.

 

[anat0l]

No insensitivity intended -- for me, the issue is that using any word regardless of origin that isn't likely to be understood by most people is likely to confuse people, which may make them feel embarrassed and thus it comes across as elitist/pretentious. The point I think is to make the menu accessible to people to understand.

My background is primarily Nordic, which isn't exactly a region most airlines are going to run to for culinary inspiration, but if they did, yes, I would consider it "pretentious" to use e.g., the Swedish word for meatballs that most people won't know or understand, especially on a route unrelated to Sweden.

Now, if "polpette" were on the menu for Perth to Rome, I'd feel differently (though a descriptor in English might still be helpful).

It's a fine balance that is weird to resolve. Not defending QF here but this is not as easy as one thinks.

"Polpotte" is Italian style meatballs. The Italian identity comes from the inclusion of cheese (e.g. Parmesan), breadcrumbs and Italian herbs to the mix.

You could say "Italian meatballs" (as opposed to Swedish meatballs), but then some might not know why it was necessary to call them "Italian". If you just said "meatballs", someone might think it's a waste of a dish.

At what point do you call it in terms of dishes not being termed in their origin. For example:

• Coq au vin (red wine chicken)
• Crème brulée (toffee-topped egg custard)
• Salad niçoise (tuna salad with olives, green beans and potato)
• Pannacotta (cooked cream pudding)
• Pavlova (hard and soft meringue cake)
• Vol-au-vent (puff pastry tart)
• Chicken parmigiana (fried breaded chicken)
• Fois gras (fatty duck liver)
• Babaganoush (eggplant whipped with tahini)
• Kibbeh (Arabic croquette)
• Arancini (fried risotto balls)
• Bresoala (dried sliced beef)
• Haggis (chopped heart and lungs, boiled in a wee sheep's stomach - according to Groundskeeper Willie) (OK I made this one up: wouldn't have an airline in the world brave enough to serve or reinterpret that on board)

One that gets across many airlines is ingredients. Qantas, US airlines and BA often qualify their ingredients with who supplied them or which region they come from. I'm sure there's people who don't care and/or are confused as to why that needs to be explained (viz. chicken is chicken; prawns are prawns, who cares if they come from Spencer Gulf). Asian airlines often have cuisine that features quite exotic ingredients, some with no good translation into English. Last time I flew Asiana (long time ago), the Korean meal came with "side dishes" (in Korean, these were banchan) that were never elaborated or explained either by the menu or the FAs. I'm sure many have been confused by a type of fish, fungus or plant they've never heard of before.

Luke Mangan - both when he was organising VA's catering as well as his food being featured in his Sydney restaurant - was French inspired. Yep plenty of French named dishes that didn't make sense to me at the time. Pretentious? Or am I just uncultured?

To what degree do you "deculture" something because not enough people understand what it is?

I suppose they should name the dishes according to what an average Australian would recognise, i.e. get someone off the street and run the menu by them.

Another approach would be to explain the menu items along with the name of it. The Asian airlines are good at this, e.g. "Fried Kwey Teow - rice noodles wok fried with chicken, prawns etc." I would still suspect that FAs working for Asian airlines would be very good at fielding questions from passengers about the meaning of their food.

Some would say that one of life's adventures is being able to experience food that you have no idea about.......

 

[anat0l]

And as we'd say in Toronto "What about them leafs?" I honestly wonder what customers are meant to make of this. I couldn't even see any dressing on the plate.

View attachment 352511

I thought that was half of the salad remaining from the bowl in the previous picture.

The leaves look nicer than usual.

Maybe Qantas should consider having a salad bar on wheels: tailor your side salad to your liking. That'd make some heads turn, though I'd suspect it might only be as big as that bowl, plus retraining the FAs............

 

[RooFlyer]

Another approach would be to explain the menu items along with the name of it. The Asian airlines are good at this, e.g. "Fried Kwey Teow - rice noodles wok fried with chicken, prawns etc." I would still suspect that FAs working for Asian airlines would be very good at fielding questions from passengers about the meaning of their food.

That’s what I hope they would do, at least when using uncommon or less common terms. One that was raised earlier is Kung Pau (?) chicken. I didn’t know what that was but maybe I’m just haven’t gotten around enough. But the fact that I think it was chilli based really should be explained otherwise it could be a dish just gone to waste if ordered and not knowing that.

In my experience, mentioned before, was that FAs on international generally didn’t know what the terms are, other than the basic chicken, beef, fish, etc. Maybe it’s changed these days?

 

[FlyingKangaroo]

To what degree do you "deculture" something because not enough people understand what it is?

I suppose they should name the dishes according to what an average Australian would recognise, i.e. get someone off the street and run the menu by them.

Another approach would be to explain the menu items along with the name of it. The Asian airlines are good at this, e.g. "Fried Kwey Teow - rice noodles wok fried with chicken, prawns etc." I would still suspect that FAs working for Asian airlines would be very good at fielding questions from passengers about the meaning of their food.

Some would say that one of life's adventures is being able to experience food that you have no idea about.......

It's one of life's best adventures, but for some, it may be too much of an adventure having no idea what they're getting themselves into. Hence the solutions you've just proposed.

You can make a menu more accessible without de-culturing it by simply adding a few explanatory terms. Many Asian carriers do tend to be quite good at this. Icelandair is another example that comes to mind --- they lean heavily into native Icelandic foods and names on their buy-on-board menus, while adding some context that just doesn't just helpfully explain what the item is but also goes a bit further to tell a bit of a story about that item. If anything, that amplifies the cultural aspect and invites people to join in.

I don't mean to go off-topic so I won't stray further, but RooFlyer's comment's definitely struck a chord with me given the last thing I did before takeoff was quickly try to Google words from the menu, perhaps subconsciously afraid of looking stupid asking the crew what something was.

 

[muppet]

"Polpotte" is Italian style meatballs. The Italian identity comes from the inclusion of cheese (e.g. Parmesan), breadcrumbs and Italian herbs to the mix.

“Polpette il sugo” is Italian style meatballs.

“Baked beef polpette” is just using the Italian word to make meatball sound fancy on a non-Italian airline flying to a Spanish speaking country.

Saying “Beef and gravy tarte” doesn’t mean it’s a French Four ‘n’ Twenty pie …

 

[anat0l]

“Polpette il sugo” is Italian style meatballs.

“Baked beef polpette” is just using the Italian word to make meatball sound fancy on a non-Italian airline flying to a Spanish speaking country.

Saying “Beef and gravy tarte” doesn’t mean it’s a French Four ‘n’ Twenty pie …

I thought the "il sugo" part just emphasises that it is served in sauce?

"Beef and gravy tarte" would make me rather incredulous. The meat pie we love in Australia doesn't really eexistat all in France and "tarte", although a "direct translation", is not a good translation for it. Using the word certainly doesn't make any attempt to connect the dish to the original one in the culture that inspired it.

 

[SYD]

On cue, in today‘s Good Weekend…

 

[Berlin]

When reading this, I can’t help remembering that AA flight from LA to Seattle a while back. One of the meal choices was a “charcuterie plate” which I ordered. The flight attendant, bless her- one of those “experienced” ones with a perfectly sitting perm, was visibly surprised that I dared to pronounce that thing and repeated “So you’re having the Tap-Pas, hon?”.

Next row behind me, the passenger asks what “that thing” was. Flight attendant asks up a row to get me pronounce it “He said it so perfectly- would you mind repeating?” She kept going with that until about row 5, yelling up to me “The French guy in row 1, can you please say it again?”. I’m not French, just for the record but that High School exchange in year 7 seems to have left enough of a mark that I still go through as “French” in the US

 

[LinaLee]

QF171 MEL-WLG 4 Nov 2023
Departed on time. PDB offered. 3x choices of brekkie. I went for the eggs n bacon n spinach. Eggs were bland but at least it tasted ok. A which like looking pastry was offered but I did not take up offer. The other two was a spinach feta quiche (if I remember right) and a muesli. Champagne was a Jacquart.

 

[wannabeinvestmentbanker]

In my experience, mentioned before, was that FAs on international generally didn’t know what the terms are, other than the basic chicken, beef, fish, etc. Maybe it’s changed these days?

I was standing in the galley waiting to get changed on a recent flight and they have reasonably extensive notes on everything on the menu including wines. There are photos and even pronunciation guides on some of the key terms.

 

[RooFlyer]

I was standing in the galley waiting to get changed on a recent flight and they have reasonably extensive notes on everything on the menu including wines. There are photos and even pronunciation guides on some of the key terms.

So things have changed . I know VA FAs have an iPad with piccies and notes these days.

 

[mviy]

Didn’t have a meal on the flight to SYD as I had a FLounge visit coming up.

On the flight to AKL apparently they had catered for a full J cabin when there were only 3 passengers.

Best short haul flight I’ve had in a long time.

I had a few serves of the curry

 

[Berlin]

Didn’t have a meal on the flight to SYD as I had a FLounge visit coming up.

On the flight to AKL apparently they had catered for a full J cabin when there were only 3 passengers.

Best short haul flight I’ve had in a long time.

I had a few serves of the curryView attachment 352620

I dunno. That “curry” looks like you’d spend the next two days on the toilet

 

[mviy]

I dunno. That “curry” looks like you’d spend the next two days on the toilet

So far I haven’t but between that and what I ate in the FLounge I’m still feeling pretty full

 

[anat0l]

Yes, I'm sure all those carriers 'can' do fine - but they don't always. Have had some pretty leathery steaks on EK (haven't had steak on SQ or MH and haven't flown BA). I've also had a couple of good steaks on QF over the years.

I can attest to this one. This is why I hardly select the steak option on board, because it's nearly always a miss when it comes to how it gets done.

My last flight with EK F I ordered the steak (a tenderloin I believe). The FA even asked me how I would like it, and I asked for medium rare. I would have been content with medium. It came out well done. OK, no biggie, so long as it is tender and tasty. It was neither.



Now I get it - it seems a bit silly to offer something on the menu when one struggles to serve it correctly. That said, of course not everyone wants a medium rare steak, and I feel for the FAs who might have very specific instructions to get this cook right and still may not hit the mark due to all sorts of variations between kitchen and galley. Not to mention that at least someone cooking a steak on the ground can monitor and test it as it cooks: that's impossible in the air unless the galley has a skillet or pan. And in the end, someone is going to have to take a punt on the steak.......

MH used to have a mixed grill breakfast which was served in F and/or J. It was filling and quite tasty, but the steak was often a tough and/or chewy coupon (the lamb chop was not entirely far behind it).

The last time I had steak on BA CW - chosen mainly because by the time I was served, there was only the steak or the salad main left - it was pretty ordinary. It wasn't tough, but lacked flavour, which is ironic given that it was swimming in sauce and juices.

I once tried the steak fillet on QF J on the way to DFW. Tasteless and tough. I sent it back and got the Jiangxi fish instead - much better.

I guess all in all, several steaks on board come out like banquet steaks. You don't expect a lot from the latter really, but if you take a chance and get a good one, enjoy it.

 

[Flyfrequently]

I took a punt with the beef on CX178 in September @anat0l and it was past midnight....
The steak was tender and tasty, perhaps enhanced by the "Cloud Nine" !

 

[Mh4k]

Had the “vegetarian pizza” on domestic last week as they’d run out of cheese and the only other offering was soup. It looked and for the most part tasted as if someone had vomited on a small square of industrial carpet.

 

[Daver6]

QF649 SYD-PER 12:30pm scheduled departure. PDB bottle of water left by the seat.

Lamb shanks was decent. As others have said, slow cooked meat is the way to go. While possibly the smallest shank I've seen, it was sufficient.