mikebg

I have not flown much in EL AL for almost 3 years. I used to fly in F to and from London every month, sometimes more often, and sometimes to New York, and always took the SKML (Hamasbia). If you can custom-order from Hamasbia that must be new. It certainly was not the case in my time. In fact, it had been quite catastrophic, and as a result of a long and often acrimonious correspondence (and series of meetings at the EL AL head offices) did EL AL agree to upgrade the SKML to approximately the same standard as the regular F meal. It was a long and painful saga (I was a PL then, in the days before they invented TPL, and they took that status quite seriously).

The Hamasbia meals are OK, but not remotely as good as Hermolis. To give them credit, they do try hard (and I get their meals from TLV on BA as well). Their main problem is that they cannot source as good quality ingredients (like meat and veg) with Badatz kashrut as Hermolis can in London (with Kedassia approval).

One thing which was certainly true then, but may have changed since, was that if you ordered SKML they would prepae a complete set of choices for EACH passenger! So you got a choice of fish, chicken or beef. You could (and I usually did) take all three. So that was way better than what you got in business, when there was no choice. I also recall (as recently as a year ago) much more impressive (and tasty) starters in F than in business, both in quality, variety and quantity.