Swiss
Earlier this month, Swiss began serving its first and business class passengers on outbound, long-haul flights a new menu developed in partnership with Lorenzo Albrici, the chef de cuisine of Ristorante Locanda Orico in Bellinzona.
Developed as part of the airline’s Swiss Taste of Switzerland programme, the menus feature dishes inspired by the cuisine of Switzerland’s Italian-speaking region of Canton Ticino, with a few French influences thrown in as well.
Dishes include a variety of intriguing ingredients, including stinging nettle cream sauce that is prepared as part of the Ticino-style trout fillet with vegetable brunoise and blue potato puree main dishes for first class passengers.
Business class passengers, meanwhile, can expect to see mains such as beef tenderloin with wholegrain mustard sauce, Valle Maggia polenta, baby carrot and courgette. Regional wines and cheeses will also be served in both classes.
The new menu will run until the beginning of September.
Lufthansa
Swiss isn’t the only Lufthansa Group carrier offering new menus. Lufthansa itself has begun offering a new menu for first class, business, premium economy and economy passengers on all flights to and from India.
Developed by Vinod Saini, master chef at The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, the menus combine traditional Indian ingredients with a contemporary twist. Mains include a martaban gosht (red meat cooked in spices and chilli), chandani murgh korma (chicken braised with yoghurt or cream, water or stock) and shalgam gosht (red meat curry with turnips).
Lufthansa began serving the new menus in May, the same month it began serving Chaayos Masala Tea on all of its flights to and from India.
Thai Airways
Another airline that has partnered with a hotel to develop a special in-flight menu, Thai Airways recently gave its Royal Silk Class passengers flying out of Taipei a five-star menu upgrade.
From now until August 31, 2018 the airline is serving a business class menu developed in collaboration with the Mandarin Oriental, Taipei on its flights TG633 and TG635 from Taipei to Bangkok. The menus have been divided into three cycles each running for one month with a different Western and Asian option offered in each cycle.
In June, this includes a Western menu main course option of marinated Japanese beef, onion puree, seasonal vegetables and beef jus, and an Asian menu main course of glazed sweet and sour Taiwanese black pork with fresh pineapple.
Japan Airlines
Japan Airlines also has recently introduced a fresh new menu on just one of its services as part of its JAL Bedd Sky Auberge concept.
At the beginning of June, the airline began offering a menu created by Ryuji Teshima, chef of Paris-based, Michelin-starred Restaurant Pages on its JL046 flight from Paris to Tokyo Haneda.
Both first and business class passengers on the flight will be offered menus that largely feature the same dishes as each other, though there will be some choices kept exclusively for those travelling in first class.
For example, both first and business class passengers have the choice of ordering cod fish, which is prepared with tomatoes and shio koji Japanese seasoning in a tomato sauce, but only those in first class can order the blue shrimp and octopus served with saffron rice and seasonal vegetables.
This new menu will run until August.
Aegean Airlines
Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines is offering a new, distinctly Greek-themed menu throughout 2018 for its business class passengers on international flights.
Featuring “flavours from Crete Naxos, the Peloponnese, and ingredients from all over Greece”, the menu comprises some 40 dishes put together by three big names in modern Greek gastronomy: seafood specialist Lefteris Lazarou, Athens-based Christoforos Peskias and leading Greek Chef Patissier, Stelios Parliaros.
The menu is also being accompanied by a selection of wines chosen by Greece’s first ever Master of Wine, Konstantinos Lazarakis.
Finnair
Finnair’s Signature Chef programme first took off in 2013 and in the years since it has seen the introduction of numerous special menus created by a medley of world-class chefs.
Among the most recent of these is Seoul-based Sung-Yeol Nam, whose new menu for the airline has been developed to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the airline’s route to the South Korean capital.
Being offered to business class passengers travelling from Seoul to Helsinki, the menu features dishes featuring what chef Nam says were “the ingredients and the food I grew up with”.
This notably includes such dishes as beef rolls with young greens as an appetiser, and sea bass “Jeon” served with grilled spring onion and Romanesco sauce for mains.
Finnair is offering this menu from May to July this year.
