No, being critical of the very poor offering in business class on very short segments does not mean that one expects a "four course meal" anymore than formulating criticisms about the KL NS lounge means that one regards it as a "refugee camp" so let us climb down from the tendency towards ridiculous hyperboles and move onto the terrain of reasonable, balanced assessments.

No, I was not expecting a four course meal. I can even understand that they replace the service in business class by a bag (even though there are other airlines which, on similar length sector, manage to deliver a proper service in business class). But if you are going to go down the route of replacing the business class meal by a sandwich and sweet snack in a bag, it seems to me that it is not unreasonable to expect that sandwich to be somewhat more elaborate and of a better quality than just a slice of cheese between two slices of bread and to expect the snack to be also better than a dime-a-dozen motorway service station standard small cookie. While I understand that a full bar service through the whole plane would be challenging and I can understand that, in Y, you be given a bottle of water with no alternative, I would have thought that, in business class, a basic bar service, even if it is with a more limited range of items, would be a minimum standard, especially on a route like AMS-NWI where business class is typically a small handful of customers.

By way of comparison, this is typically the kind of meal that you will get in business class on a BA LHR-MAN, a sector of similar length to AMS-NWI and you will also get a full bar service.

No bitterness here, just injecting a little bit of nuance and thinking that there is a middle course to be struck between unqualified blind praise and equally blind systematic thrashing. You said that you were "impressed" and "consistently" so by KLM short/medium haul service. It seems to me that, in order to so, one would need to turn a blind eye to some aspects of the service which are not so great.

I am generally happy with KL's intra-European service. I think that, on the whole, they do generally a good job. I do not think that I would say that I am "impressed" in the sense that I do not think that they are that exceptional compared to their European peers but their offering in the air is generally sound so I would not take any issue with that. But that does not mean that one should be blind to some areas of service which are poor. I struggle to see how one could be impressed by what KL offers in business on AMS-NWI. Are you really impressed by the business class service on AMS-NWI?