Qantas Business Class meals & menus

Hmm, could have fooled me: From what I can see, plenty of people on here- myself included- batting more than just an eyelid quite regularly at the often dismal Qantas food offerings in J.
I flew BNE-AKL 15 February and copped a Neil Perry special!
Again QF should provide a dictionary to determine some of Neil's ingredients.\

My partner had the Spicy Red Lentil soup and it was "hot"!
Mains just looked "cheap" - I had the chicken breast and unfortunately the ginger and shallot relish had been poured onto the chicken and ,by the time I was served, it had soaked into the meat - not to my liking.
There were 2 cheeses on the cheese plate and both quite tasteless.The dates tasted good though.

I just wonder what is the QF catering budget for the J food to NZ-could not be more than $10 . On the trans Tasman 737s there isn't much else to do than drink and eat ( hard to see the small screen)

To be fair the wines were good - ( at least Perry is not choosing them yet ! )

To be fair, maybe I should have pre fed myself up at the QF International lounge in BNE - but I had already thought of that - no such luck - Neil Perry had excelled himself with his Korean offerings- again no idea what was in them - all either in a soup or needed to be served in a bowl.
Does not Perry ever think lounge pax may appreciate the ability to make a simple salad with a roll or offer us the makings of a hamburger or offer some pasta ?

I may just be me, but once , I used to actually look forward to J meals on QF trans Tasman say a decent filet steak or veal or lamb chops , or lasagna or a hamburger, pumpkin or tomato soup or a seafood starter.

I return later this week and sure hope that Neil has not infected whatever dining options are available pre take off the AKL Qantas lounge. I might make myself some sandwiches to take on board in case the above menu is repeated on the way back.

Is anyone listening at Qantas HQ?
 

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QF43 SYD-DPS yesterday. All in all a good flight - food fairly good (by QF standards) but meal service felt slow, and now that I'm typing this up and checking timestamps on photos - definitely was. On boarding we had menus at our seats and were offered a PDB.

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We then had a minor departure delay due to 'inconsistent pax loadings' so meal orders were taken prior to departure, seemingly in status order as the crew went from my partner and I in row 2 to someone in row 4/5, then back to row 1. Poor guy in front of me asks for two mains and gets swiftly shut down. We pushed back 30 minutes late, at 5:15pm.

T+45m: Drinks service

T+1h15m: Starter service

Zucchini and basil soup with parmesan croute - I don't often pick the soup but this sounded good. It was quite hearty and went well with a little dollop of the Pepe Saya butter served with the 'bakery'. Would definitely order again.

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Salad of herbed lemon chicken with chickpeas, balsamic onions, broccolini and saffron aioli - a large portion for a starter and certainly better than most Neil Perry salads. Chicken wasn't dry thankfully, and the dish tasted quite nice, although the saffron aioli tasted suspiciously similar to hollandaise sauce. Neil could have called this dish 'Chicken Benedict' and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

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T+1h55m: Mains service

Sandwich of slow cooked chipotle lamb with sweet onions, mint salsa and salted chilli - very, very tasty with a decent chilli kick. I would've usually gone for the barramundi main, but I'd just had a serving of barra in the SYD F lounge so decided to switch it up. Didn't regret it, but it was difficult not to drop bits of the lamb (luckily I've honed these skills over many years of sloppy kebabs at 3am .. cue big night eh/double shots comments)

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Beef fillet with Paris mash, green beans and salsa verde - Steak on a plane. You already know how this ends, and so did I, but my partner just couldn't resist ordering it. The meat was dry and beyond the capabilities of David Caon's picnic cutlery. The saving grace was the rather oily salsa verde (you can see the puddle in the top right corner) which helped rehydrate the steak slightly.

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T+2h30m: Dessert service

Vanilla creme caramel - Delicious, as a dessert should be. More surprisingly a very large portion - served in a soup entree bowl. Not complaining.

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T+3h: Dessert plates cleared.

At this point we were almost halfway through the flight. I wasn't intentionally tracking time but through watching a 4 x 1 hour episode docu-series (Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, highly recommended if anyone is vaguely interested in hip hop!) I was conscious of each hour that passed.

T+5h10m: Pre arrival snack served.

Sweet potato roll with tomato relish - fairly good. Sweet potato was mixed with lots of spices, presumably to mask the fact it is sweet potato. If you closed your eyes you could nearly imagine this was a samosa rather than a vegetarian-friendly sausage roll.

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Thai style fish cakes with pickled cucumber and chilli dressing - Run of the mill reheatable fish cakes. Nothing special but still edible. Between this and the sweet potato roll, I'd probably go the roll.

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This is the first time I've flown A330 J to DPS and it is so much more enjoyable than on the 737. I'm definitely repositioning for this run again in future.
 
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QF881 OOL-MEL 1155, Had a very nice Lamb Rogan Josh. A little more lamb would have been nice but the taste was top notch. Service was fantastic and attentive, unfortunately the J lavs got a workout from the great unwashed with no effort to turn them back :p
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QF691 MEL-ADL snack service
Cheese platter, party pies or third option was a salad for memory. Pies were ok for a snack service and the FA also brought around some sweets. Nice and quick service and attentive staff
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QF691 MEL-ADL snack service
Cheese platter, party pies or third option was a salad for memory. Pies were ok for a snack service and the FA also brought around some sweets. Nice and quick service and attentive staff

I wonder if the salad was a proper salad or the NP weeds?
 
Gotta be the best ever. QF448 delayed from 16:45 takeoff to 18:00. Neil Perry at his best. Party pies or cheese. Omg.
 

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11am flight CBR-MEL refreshment. No pics as I didn’t eat but options were yoghurt (which I think everyone got anyway) or a hot calzone with cheese, prosciutto and stuff. The calzone sounded and looked (from a distance) good, if a little awkward to eat.
 
Recent HND-SYD. 10pm departure local time is midnight AEDST meaning I only had the sandwich (no pics) and slept instead.

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Don’t disagree but the flight actually left after the dinner was meant to occur :-(

Unfortunately not relevant. You'd need to go a bit longer till the catering was deemed unusable and had to be replaced. You still got what was planned for that pre-dinner flight. I do understand the frustration but in no way would I have expected a dinner service on that flight with the delay.
 
QF635 dinner service BNE-MEL last Saturday.

"Balinese style duck with Jasmine Rice" - tasted much better than it looked (yes, the duck pieces, and quite a bit of it too, were under the green curry). The rice was pretty good ad the duck pink and tender.

Wine offered was a Chardy and whatever the red was. Had been in the lounge anyway so just stuck to water. Quite a good flight.

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Di
Unfortunately not relevant. You'd need to go a bit longer till the catering was deemed unusable and had to be replaced. You still got what was planned for that pre-dinner flight. I do understand the frustration but in no way would I have expected a dinner service on that flight with the delay.
i didn’t expect dinner. But I didn’t expect a party pie either :-(
 
yes the party pies are a new low level of "enhancement" to the afternoon "refreshment" service. Absolutely agree.

Unfortunately seems VA has sunk just as low (or lower) with simple sambos on some flights from what I have seen. With this kind of "competition" I guess we're lucky to get something warmed at all!
 
i didn’t expect dinner. But I didn’t expect a party pie either :-(
Well- that's pretty much the standard on Qantas out of meal times now. And no- that doesn't mean I agree with them that this is an even remotely acceptable meal in Business class: It's woefully inadequate in my eyes.
 
QF35 - MEL - SIN 27 Feb.

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I had the Thai Fish Cakes to start. (Sorry, forgot to take a picture until the end.). The sauce and Thai spices were lovely but the fish cakes I thought were bland, they could have been white toast with spicy Thai sauce for all I could taste. You can tell from the photo I enjoyed the sauce as I ate the fish cakes.
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I then followed up with the lamb sandwich which I liked. Lamb was tender, and flavorful. If I was to be slightly critical I think the bread is fractionally too thick, but that is being picky. Sandwich held together well whilst eating, no drippage or losing onions.

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