The thing is that countries like Portugal, or France for that matter, have a culture of good eating that reflects everywhere: from the small bakery to the supermarket to the high-end establishment. That culture isn't as widespread here. Or otherwise our shops wouldn't be 3/4 full of ready meal and confectionery, or obesity so rampant. I heard somebody call Greggs a quality establishment, a while ago, and they weren't joking or referring it as a fine purveyor of clogged arteries.

Then, I think, there's the problem of the people at BA who run the food operation. I strenuously refuse to agree to the fact that the glob served by the airline is due to the fact that they want the cheapest possible. Do&Co isn't cheap. It just isn't. I know it had a substantial mark-up compared to Gategourmet. And, by the same token, I refuse to think that good food must by necessity be expensive. I described before how one of my aunts, who ran the catering of a high school in the suburbs of Paris, managed to serve three-course meals to her kids with a budget of a few euros per head.

What I think is the problem is that BA isn't hiring the right people. They have London on its doorstep, a veritable cornucopia of world cuisine, and yet what comes out of BA makes me think that whoever decides the menus hasn't been anywhere East of Egham and finds Nando's to be the pinnacle of food. In fact, I remember speaking with one guy who, now, I believe is a bigwig in the customer experience department. He'd been visiting Rome as part of the launch of the FCO lounge and was waxing lyric about a 'genuinely Italian' place he'd found. After a while, it emerged that the place was 'Rossopomodoro', basically Pizza Express without the excuse of not being outside Italy.