I love airplane food. In fact, the hairs on the back of my neck stand in sheer delight when I smell the familiar aroma of the inside of an airplane. I remember the days when the economy class steak on a Malaysia Airline flight still had the red meat juices in it (before everything went downhill in the last ten years). I don’t fly home on many carriers – apart from MAS, it’d be BA (when we had Subang), SIA, KLM and Emirates. The worst inflight meal would go to KLM in my opinion as it would comprise a non-succulent sarnie of some description, although I have to give them credit for providing halal meals (a card with the comforting phrase “tidak mengandungi zat babi” would accompany every meal tray) for their South East Asian routes.

Currently, my favourite inflight meals have been Emirates (well, that’s what I’ve been flying the last five years). I have to say the quantity of food served by Emirates (even on economy) have somewhat dwindled a tad. So, I was looking forward to what they were serving on Business class which I had the pleasure to fly on both the MAN-DXB and DXB-KUL legs of my journey home recently.

I have travelled on the A380’s Business Class before and I did find the food somewhat weird. I’m a meat and potatoes man myself, so if you remember the scene in Big when Tom Hanks was regurgitating the caviar from his mouth, you know what I’m talking about.

As an hors d’œuvre I was first served some canapés – the only one I enjoyed was the maki-like tuna in seaweed. The blue cheese was like WHOA! and I can’t stand duck (I did have a bite and it wasn’t as gamey as the Chinese-styled roasted version). This was followed by a mini mezze. When it arrived, I just realised I had the same mezze on my previous flight. Going round the dish, my favourites were the hommous, stuffed vine leaves and cheese. I couldn’t tahan the terung (both the makdous and moutabal had them). Just serve some sausages lah like the kemia I had on my 40th. Dang, how I miss the bellydancers food at Pasha.

There was no filet mignon like last time so I had to make do with the lamb fillet. Mrs Cornell commented on the weirdness of the combo served on the platter, worthy of a Masterchef entry. The lamb was served with curry sauce instead of gravy and had pisang goreng. I thought it’d be some unripe banana that may taste like ubi, but nope – it was your typically pisang goreng manis that you could buy at the roadside. The verdict? It tasted quite nice actually. Meat in curry and fried bananas in the mouth, chewed in total harmony. Yum.

Because of the pre-flight meal I had at the Business Class lounge (rice pilaff with kari lobster) at MAN, I was too full for dessert, which was some mango cheesecake thingie I think. And I’ve to save some space for the obligatory Whopper with Cheese at DXB.

For the second leg of the journey on the 777-200, we had a typical western-styled breakfast which was nothing much to shout about despite being on Business. I could see the obvious difference when compared with Economy but my palate wasn’t prepared for anythig too avant garde. Like, I could’ve gone for the chicken but orange risotto? And the tuna had a mango salsa. I think you could see by now a pattern in my aversion for mixing any sort of fruit (tomatoes are an exception for this pick eater) with my main course.

The verdict: it was nice but I’ve had better on Economy. More ‘typical’ beef/chicken meals would be welcomed, so here’s the next 25,000 Skywards miles to spend for trying it out again!