oneworld82

Hi,

I will soon fly IAH-DME-SIN-HKG, all in F... Is Caviar offered in any of these flights?

thanks!

shuigao

Don't know your flights in detail, but generally you can only reliably get caviar during dinner service.

Lunch service gets satay instead of caviar.

Taylor made

SQ can be a tad indifferent on service and what is offered... I have been told a number of times that for instance lunch does not include the pralines (which are pretty average but I keep on asking for) as its a lunch service not a dinner service.

Anyways, for the Sin- HKG flights (and I have done many of them at a variety of times) I have always had the opportunity of ordering caviar.

For a lunch flight and dinner flight SQ normally offer the satay straight after take off and then the caviar, soup, salad etc...as part of the meal service.

Unfortunately I do not know the times that SQ consider lunch or dinner. I recently caught a medium length flight (7 hours) at 11:45am and was offered brunch...which did have caviar offered but no salad. I recently caught a 23:30 flight and caviar was on offer, then the 01:00 flight 2 weeks later had no caviar.

I have recently been told by a Purser that the service and catering that SQ offers is entirely dependent on the country they are flying to and from as a cost reduction method.

Hope that helps!

k3nnis

What are my chances for caviar for these flights?

If flying Suites for the following route do we get caviar ?

SQ 232 : 12:15pm departure SYD-SIN
SQ 221: 8:40pm departure SIN-SYD

wanderer9020

Confirmed SQ221 for a caviar. Taken exactly the same flight last year. Fingers crossed that they didnt change it.

k3nnis

Thanks. Hopefully I get it on SQ232 as well :P

NetJets Germany

Without wanting to dampen the spirits of the "high society" on this board, I do hope you realise that airline catering departments work towards budgets, even in F, and therefore the caviar that you are likely to get served at 39,000 feet will probably be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff... If caviar is your priority, I would recommend to pick up a nice jar or two on the ground and enjoy it at your leisure - what you will get for free on board is more likely than not to disappoint you.

Disclaimer: I am involved in trading caviar, so am very sadly quite familiar with how stingy purchasing managers are even at very high-profile establishments like luxury hotels, high-end restaurants or top-end airlines...

k3nnis

Thanks for your reply. I guess for me caviar is better than no caviar

oneworld82

A tin of Calvisius caviar - albeit not Sevruga nor Beluga - still retails for $50+. That's still pretty good for something I would not pay for on the ground

NetJets Germany

And that's what I am talking about. A good analogy would be champagne: When you fly in F, you would expect to be served Krug or Dom Perignon, wouldn't you (Or something in that bracket)?

The Calvisius stuff you refer to is pretty much your bog standard Veuve Clic or Pommery or Moet Chandon, entry-level class.

By the way, it does not have to be sevruga or beluga; even among osetra caviar you will find a whole range from outright terrible to absolutely divine stuff. But the airlines know that the general public know very little about good caviar, and thus they fob us off with cheap stuff, even though we pay top dollar to fly in F.

Oh well, at least we don't have more important problems to worry about!

chisquared

Out of curiosity, since you know a lot on the subject: what should we be looking for when trying to figure out if caviar is good? What is the equivalent of Dom/Krug for caviar?

oneworld82

I was going to ask about that! Also, if Calvisius is like Moët it's not that bad!! The "problem" with caviar is brand-recognition. I am well aware that what's served is entry-level stuff (the price attests to it), but the good thing is that even entry-level stuff is pretty good. Just like champagne.

NetJets Germany

Mods, please forgive me for going OT, but seeing as people are asking, of course I am happy to share the little I know:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
If you want to know the Dom Perignon and Krug of the world you are probably looking at Petrossian and Caviar House & Prunier - both are top quality and just as famous as their champagne brothers. In terms of an independent producer, I would list Mottra at the top of the list - they are also the guys with the massaged / milked caviar.

And if you want to have a bit more background information, here it is:

CITES COMPLIANT VS ILLEGAL
The trade in wild caviar has been banned since 2006 due to rampant over-fishing, and now every respectable caviar brand has to adhere to the provision set out by CITES (The Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species). There is still a lot of smuggled caviar around, unfortunately, and it is often sold are relatively low prices because it is harvested and traded illegally. Very small quotas exist for trade in wild caviar, but I would be very hesitant about touching anything that gets sold as "wild" nowadays. So buyer beware, especially if something looks too good to be true!

FARMED VS WILD
This also means that any caviar that is produced legally today is farmed caviar. That does not make it automatically worse than wild caviar - in fact, some of the good producers can make caviar that actually tastes better than wild caviar!

PRICE VS QUALITY
3. The price of caviar is - annoyingly - not directly correlated to quality. In fact, what drives caviar prices more than anything are two other factors: size of the beads / grains, and rarity. People for whatever reason like to pay more for larger sized caviar, and they pay a lot more the rarer it is (Usually to show off). In the extreme this results in some crazy guys paying tens of thousands of US Dollars for a tin of "white" caviar, because it comes from an albino fish...

STURGEON SPECIES
I will use the analogy of grape varieties now to illustrate the idea: There are many different sturgeon types which all produce caviar. The most well-known ones are Ascipenser ("Sturgeon" in Latin) Baerii ("Siberian"), Schrencki ("Japanese"), Gueldenstadtli ("Russian"), Huso Huso ("Beluga") and Ruthenus ("Sterlet"). Take note that the word "Osetra" in its various spellings simply means "Sturgeon" in Russian, so that osetra in itself does not officially refer to any particular type of sturgeon or caviar. Now, some people like Chardonnay best, others Sauvignon Blanc, still others prefer Riesling, and most people like all of the above, just not the same every day. It is the same with caviar: There is no BEST taste for all, just have whatever you like best yourself and be happy with that.

KILLED VS MASSAGED / MILKED
Most caviar is harvested the "traditional" way, by killing the fish a short while before the eggs are ready to spawn and then hatch. Naturally, this is a bit of a waste. There are some producers who have found a way to extract the eggs without killing the fish: When the eggs are ripe and the sturgeon is ready to spawn, you take her out of the water briefly (10-15 mins) and massage its stomach in a particular way. If you know how to do this right (And it is apparently quite tricky to get it right!), you can get her to spawn naturally. So she pushes out the eggs herself, someone with a bucket catches them as they come out, they get cleaned and the fish goes back in the water ASAP. Job done, and the sturgeon can live on, up to a hundred years in some cases. They can only reproduce every 2-3 years, by the way. I am taking the example of an Ascipenser Baerii here. As you can tell, personally I am a fan of this latter approach. There is, however, only one producer who offers massaged caviar consistently, and they are also the ones who pioneered this method; their name is Mottra.

RIVER FARMS VS TANKS
Most caviar farms keep their fish in rivers. While this looks more natural, there is one problem with this: You cannot control the water quality at all, and therefore there remains a high risk of pollution, contamination and disease. For this reason, many river farmers will have to give their fish antibiotics and steroids to do well. If you keep fish in tanks, it looks less romantic, but you can control the environment much better. And you can even do without antibiotics, steroids or hormones. The water temperature can also be kept at the optimum level, and there are no predators around, which means stress levels for the fish are minimised.

FEED
Again, there is a wide range of practices. There are many producers who cut costs by using cheap fishmeal or GM feed. At the other end of the spectrum, some producers give their fish exactly the same stuff to eat that they would find in the wild. This is, of course, much more expensive, but it shows in the taste of the final product, just as it does with pasture-fed cows or free-range chickens.

PRESERVATIVES
This is an important point! In addition to salt, which pretty much every caviar has in it to the tune of 3-4%, most caviar brands will contain an artificial preservative to extend the shelf-life of the product (Unless you find yourself in countries where the addition of an artificial preservative has been banned). The most common preservatives are E284 Boric Acid and E285 Borax. Nasty stuff, but funnily enough legal to use in the EU (Though not in the U.S.!)... Some brands also use their own in-house preservative, like Russian Caviar House with their LIV-1, though God knows what's in it, as they won't tell anyone. Simplest solution: Buy caviar without any artificial preservatives, it will always say in the list of ingredients if there is some in there or not.

METAL TIN VS GLASS JAR
Metal tins are the traditional packaging for caviar. They are usually golden in colour and fairly flat. They have two draw-backs: They don't keep the caviar fresh for very long and, after a while, you have a high chance of oxidisation taking place, meaning that the caviar will take on a slightly (Or highly!) metallic taste. Some brands now sell their caviar in glass jars, which are vacuum sealed and thereby keep the caviar fresh for quite a while without any air coming in, and since there is no metal you also don't get a metallic taste (Think about beer or coke in cans vs bottles).

BRAND ONLY VS ACTUAL PRODUCER
Some of the most famous caviar brands don't have their own farms; instead they travel the world and buy from selected farmers. Petrossian and Caviar House & Prunier are examples of this. Some farms have established their own farms and sell directly to the public under their brand names, e.g. Calvisius or Mottra. Generally speaking there are many more brands without their own production than brands with their own sturgeons farms around. Bear in mind that if your supplier doesn't own production, they will need to invest more money in marketing and sourcing trips. On the other hand, they have built their reputation on ensuring you get top quality caviar, so their quality is usually very high, too, even though you pay top dollar for the brand (I.e. more than you would if you knew where to get good quality caviar from directly).


I hope I haven't bored you too much with all these details and that the advice was useful!

k3nnis

Lol. Very technical caviar explanation

Bakpapier

Thanks I find that story about caviar ery interesting.

It's way out of my budget though so I don't think I'll have it any time soon