Originally Posted by
oldchinahand
AK1 It would be interesting to know in what ways were the meals a disaster and what exactly was/is the expectation ?
Special meals are by definition not 'normal' meals in the broad sense and they obviously cannot offer the broad variety and choices that a 'normal' menu offers catering as they do for avery small minority of passengers .
'A total meal failure' sounds perhaps a little OTT. I have often seen the ex HK and UK meals and definitely there is no dairy in ether.
Perhaps in the above case the fault was that the wrong meals were delivered to the flight or wrongly ordered by the pax.
Who at Cathay did you call re the meal request,was it MPC? Did you have the CC make a report ?
A couple of vegetarians that I know sometimes BYO
At some major airports outlets offer 'take on board' vegetarian and I believe Vegan meals and these may offer a good option to the no-choice on board offerings. Better hotels in Asia I know are happy to pack take on board meals if requested and I am sure that goes also ex other major cities
Cathay special meals lists the following.
Vegetarian Vegan Meal Strict vegetarian food with high protein, rich iron and high calcium.(VGML)Vegetarian Raw MealCombination of raw fruits and vegetables along with pure fresh fruit / vegetable juices.
I have vegan business associate who has no problem at all with the 2 above meals (definitely 'no dairy)' ex HK but some outstations offerings she says are problematic particularly ex USA.
I'll restate part of my original post and elaborate:
1) I ordered "
Vegetarian Vegan Meal" for both flights
2) Because the term "Vegetarian vegan:" is ambiguous and because the definition on Cathay's web site has little or no relevance to a "vegan meal", I called Cathay prior to the flight to make sure vegan = no dairy, no animal products of any kind - they assured me it was vegan as I had described
3) On her two flights she was served a salad with a dairy dressing (other J passengers bizarrely received vinaigrette), bread and butter, pasta with cream sauce, chocolate cheesecake and coffee with milk. She asked for vegan snacks e.g. fruit but they had none - the best they could offer was instant noodles and they cautioned her the sauce had lots of MSG (not super encouraging)
4) The cabin crew were clueless about the difference between vegan and vegetarian
5) After the first flight I called again to check on my expectations for "Vegetarian Vegan" and received assurances again the meal was meant to be vegan and perhaps the ground staff had mistakenly loaded vegetarian instead of vegan,. Her second flight was the same experience as her first
So yes, it was an epic vegan meal fail by Cathay. More than happy to self-cater in economy, but seriously, in business class? No way! My expectations of Cathay were much higher and they completely sucked on these two flights as far as vegan meals go.