Archive for the ‘airplane food’ Category
malaysian airlines, sin to syd
I’m back from Sydney and taking all of Sunday to recuperate from the fun times and the red eye flight. I came home to a super clean apartment courtesy of the parents and aunt who visited last week (we both left last Monday – them to the Philippines and me to Sydney). It was so nice of them to tidy up my lil’ crib.
Sadly, I only have a few Sydney posts (one of which is not food related) lined up. Certainly less than what I had thought I would come back with, but it was a fun trip nonetheless.
Let’s start off with the flights, yes? I took Malaysian Airlines because they had a deal for Singapore to Sydney for SGD600 – even less than the budget airlines.
My first impression of MH (the airline code for Malaysian Airlines) was ho-hum. They flew a small Boeing from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur which was quite old. All of the seats were different colors – orange, blue, red, green. The result was more fiesta than anything else.
klm, singapore to amsterdam
I’ve been on a lot of airplanes lately. I’m pretending to be a jetsetter and maintaining the charade takes a lot of work.
I have a few Dublin posts coming up but to get to those, we need to get to Dublin first. KLM had decently priced tickets that didn’t have 20+ hour flight times, so I booked ‘em and had my first ever trip with the Dutch.
First up, dinner time.
jetstar: sandwiches are not as they appear
Most airlines are charging for meals these days. That’s all fine and dandy I suppose. I mean, anything that keeps the price of the ticket a bit cheaper. It’s kinda sad that you can’t bring your own food onboard. But if you’ve ever sat next to people eating dried squid or toasted anchovies then you’ll learn to appreciate this rule. (BTW, I like both dried squid and toasted anchovies but am not rude enough to eat this on a plane where air circulation is limited.)
On my Jetstar flight home from Taipei I ordered a toasted chicken sandwich. The picture looked decent and for SGD7 I thought it was pretty reasonable. A few minutes later the not-so-friendly Filipino cabin attendent dropped off the sandwich and, not really noticing, I took a few bites. Toasty. Buttery. Where are the fillings? Is there chicken in here? I put down the trusty Kindle to inspect further.
The hell. Is this what I ordered? Is there even chicken in there? I coulda sworn it looked good in the picture. (Picture me shuffling through the seat pocket to pull out the inflight magazine that includes the menu.)
Uhhhh, Jetstar. This is not even close to what you served me.
These are not the same.
vietnam airlines: han/sin/han
I haven’t done an airplane food post in awhile but my first ever flight on Vietnam Airlines definitely deserves a little shout out. It’s sad that most US airlines have eliminated free food from their flights, most Asia carriers still serve them. The flight from Singapore to Hanoi is only about 3 hours long and we still got a nice meal.
Singapore to Hanoi. From the top left going clockwise: fruit plate with watermelon, pineapple, and lychee, warm bread, entree of mixed veggies, Thai curry rice, curry with fish cakes and prawn, and potato salad with pastrami.
how about no bkk airways
If you can help it, I’d recommend finding another way to Chiang Mai. I had never heard of Bangkok Airways until I found myself at their ticket desk at the Bangkok Airport. Since we had come in on a different airline (Cathay Pacific) we booked it to the transit desk to ask them to transfer our bags for us.
Now for people who don’t use transit desks ever this might seem strange. Honestly, you can usually head to the transit desk and they can pull your bags off of the baggage carousel and then it will magically appear at your final destination. Easy as pie.
Not so for Bangkok Airways. They told us they could *try* but that we would not know if they had been able to do it until after we landed in Chiang Mai (and were either with our bags or without them). Um, no. She suggested we go through immigration, get our bags ourselves, and then check in again. Wow. Ok. Did I mention we had about 1.5 hours inbetween flights?
After a mad sprint to the transit desk, another speedwalk to immigration, a dance around the baggage carousel, another rush to the check in desk, and then more running to the gate we made it to the lounge (everyone gets to use the lounge for this flight) with 15 minutes to spare before boarding.
flight food: sfo to hkg
The whole reason why we ended up in Hong Kong was because of awesome fare deals on Singapore Airlines. The round trip flight set us back only USD770. What a deal!
In true fashion I took plenty of pictures of the plane food. Even though we boarded past midnight, we were still served a super late dinner. I picked the pesto pasta with chicken and mushrooms. Let’s call it oily but edible. Not the worst plane food ever but certainly not the best.
chen fu ji noodle house, singapore
I was rummaging through my pictures and noticed that I still have a few shots of Singapore eats that I haven’t posted yet…
MG and I noticed this place during our first stop in Singapore AFTER we had a meal at the food court next door. Doh! Good thing we had a few more stops in Singapore to come back to it.
Changi has plenty of eateries. This one is on the second floor of Terminal 2’s Transit Lounge. We had this meal after our stint in India. We tried to wait until we got to the Philippines for rice and fried fish but in the end we couldn’t wait any longer.
leg 2: seoul to singapore
After 12.5 hours of plane time we had a brief 1 hour layover in Korea. A good time for us to stretch out (thanks for seats with no armrest for ease of stretching, Incheon Airport!), walk around, and take a breath of non-cabin air. Sadly, it was night time in Korea so most of the kiosks in the terminal were closed.
leg 1: san francisco to seoul
Yah, I know I’m writing all of my travel posts out of order. No matter – food is food.
It takes a freakin’ long time to get to India. Like really long. Really, really long. The first leg of the journey was from San Francisco to Seoul. We were lucky enough to get decent deals on Singapore Airlines so we got to use the fancy individual media consoles they provide, sleep in the slightly roomier seats, and avail of the pretty tasty (by airplane standards) cuisine.
flight food
I’m finally back from my Europe adventures and have tons of food pics to share! They’re coming in no particular order but I figured the best way to start off was the same way you start any trip – at the airport and on the plane.
San Francisco to Frankfurt: chicken and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, lettuce (aka salad), carrot cake, bread roll
This was served by not-so-happy United Airlines flight attendants. Like most United food, it was too salty. The chicken had too much lemongrass or something that was way overpowering, but overall it was not bad. I steered clear of the requisite hard bread roll and chomped on the lettuce they were passing of as salad. The carrot cake was unremarkable.
San Francisco to Frankfurt: ham and cheese croissant, fruit cup
This was thrown onto my tray by the aforementioned not-so-happy flight attendants. It didn’t taste too bad (then again I’m not hard to please) but it did not look tasty. Had I not been hungry from the 10 hour flight I would not have touched it.
Rome to Athens: wrap, cheese sandwiches, lemon cake
I already have beef with Olympic Airlines since they changed our flight to Santorini no less than 4 times. The food they served was straight up strange. There were 2 cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo and one wrap with more mayo and some unidentifiable meat product. For dessert, a mostly meringue/cream lemon cake that had a 2mm burnt cake part at the bottom. Not a fan.
Athens to Frankfurt: pasta, bread roll
Lovely Lufthansa. The pasta was kinda oily but simple and pretty tasty. The bread was hard as a rock and had a strange grass-y aftertaste. Not sure what that’s about.
Feed your reader! 
