Finally had my own go on 806 with the new service. It's not as bad as previously suggested or thought! I found the food quality to be improved - although it's not trying to be fancy (or fancy-sounding) by any means. Still the taste is not bad at all. The new burger is a bit weird (if it ain't broke don't fix it!) and so is the brunch with dessert replacing the yogurts and cereals and lack of bakery items, but all in all not bad.

The pressing issue is manpower. On this flight the first meal wrapped up just short of three hours (apparently the 'benchmark' that CX ISD expects), largely smooth ~1.5 hours for the 2nd meal, but this was just because 9 crew in total helped out. Almost all 50 pax ate in both instances. It was lucky that we had a half load F class, a non-demanding cockpit, as well as midflight meal in Y so crew from both cabins could help. If all three of the above weren't the case then I don't know what it might be like.

And having done the trial last year I do miss the fancier items and wines, hopefully as the ISM said 'there will be some more fine tuning and improvements' we might see some more later. But knowing this is CX, can't keep my hopes too high up...