Originally Posted by johan rebel

I arrived from JNB this morning. The menu cover said "australian experience" in big but lower case letters. I was therefore not at all surprised to discover that the main course choices were Thai Green Curry or Paprika Beef. The starter was Duck liver terrine. Said duck may or may not have ended its days in Australia, it was hard to tell. To be fair, all the wines listed were Australian.

There have also been some changes to the à la carte breakfast, which now, in addition to the usual choice of hot dishes, offers salmon as one of the cold plate choices. Unfortunately, the catering department had failed to read the menu, so the only choice was cheese or cheese.

The sweet breakfast dish was new too, the Amarula custard sauce that has accompanied the pancakes for the last few years has been replaced by an apple and cinamon compote. Just as unfortunately, the catering department had still not read the menu, so the pancakes came without any compote whatsoever. I nevertheless tried a piece of pancake, which tasted like last week's tabloid newspaper.

Another new feature is the "eye opener" : "As an eye-opener we will serve several juices and healthy drinks". Unfortunately, the FAs did not succeed in their endeavor to open many eyes. When I woke up about two hours before arrival, more than half the pax were still asleep. Next to me I found a "hot" towel, which might have helped me open my eyes had it only still been hot. Breakfast was being served to those who were sufficiently awake from a trolley that was parked in the galley, in which trolley the breakfasts of all the still sleeping pax were slowly getting cold. Given the quality of hot dish, that hardly mattered.

Out of curiosity I enquired about the eye opener, and was given a bottle of "Knor Vie" which contained a very generous 100 ml (!!) of apple/carrot/strawberry juice. The other choices were Actimel and Yakult.

Slightly off topic, but I noticed today that catering concept in the Schengen Crown Lounge has change somewhat. The soup machine has been replaced by "home-made" tomato soup with breadsticks, and the usual sanwiches by a rice and vegetable salad. The mixed nuts have gone. A lounge agent told me that the selection now not only changes depending on the time of day, but will vary from day to day as well. All told I think it is an improvement, although I still miss the Chocomel!

Completely off topic : I was one of the first to board in JNB yesterday, so I was somewhat surprised to find at least 10 pax already seated in the upper deck WBC cabin when I arrived. I turned out that an entire KL crew had been given priority boarding (the rest were presumably in the nose section). Now I finally understand why this particular flight was listed as J0 C0 already over a month ago, even though there was plenty of availability on flights around that date!

Johan