Ugh. Duck is NOT red meat ... it might, in certain circumstances, have a reddish tinge, but it is certainly not red meat! :P

Nice try.

In French it's called magret. Definitely red. And at least medium rare. In a good restaurant it might actually be at least half wild.

I'll give you an address in Brittany if you care for one BTW. I really enjoyed their half-wild canette.

Wattle Creek - California.

I will take that address.....going back to Normandy and Brittany this spring.

folks can we stay back on topic please...... definitely I want to keep this thread for compliments.

Sometimes when I get tired of the normal catering, I request a children's meal (I'm university-aged so I would't consider myself as seasoned as some of the travellers here, but I'm certainly not a child. These meals are nice and simple so they're hard to screw up, meaning that I know I'll always have something that's edible.) My special meal is either loaded wrong or completely forgotten a surprising number of times (especially on domestic flights,) and usually all I get is a verbal apology from the service director.

On a particular YOW-YYC flight, the service director went above and beyond when they forgot my meal. Before take-off he came and apologized that my meal wasn't loaded and asked if I wanted anything from the menu before he took the orders from anyone else. This was back in the pasta/prune-sauce-beef/salmon day, so I told him I thought the pasta was too watery, the prune sauce scared me, and the salmon was too dry (and I'm not a fan of the rice with it either.) Once up in the air, he offered to remove the rice and vegetables from the salmon dish then give me 5 or 6 slices of lemon to squeeze over it to see if it tasted better, so I gave it a go. Unfortunately even the lemon couldn't help that sad piece of fish.

He then offered anything from the buy on board, so I told him I'll have anything that's heated. It was an E90 and apparently they don't serve any heated meals in Y since I think they use the one oven on board for the J meals. He said he could pop a wrap in the oven even though he technically wasn't supposed to. He removed the lettuce so it wouldn't get soggy in the heat, then put it back together and served it on one of the real plates from J.

After he finally found something that was edible for me, he apologized again and told me that he hoarded up all the bottles of jw on the E90 so he assured me that he wouldn't run out of my preferred drink for the rest of the flight.^ He also told me to report the incident to AC customer service (which I did when I landed and they responded that "clearly there was a breakdown in the ordering process between Air Canada and our caterer" and gave me 2500 AP points within 24 hours.)

I really wish AC gave their elites a few employee recognition certificates with the annual packages like UA and AS do. I had a UA recognition certificate on me and I felt like this service director more than deserved it, but I figured it would mean nothing on AC so I just gave him a sincere thank-you at the end of the flight.

While reading through all the complaints on this board, I feel like I could post about many more positive experiences like this one than I could complaints like everyone else. Maybe I'm just lucky? Knock on wood.:D

www.henrietjoseph.fr

Name makes it sound like it's run by a gay couple. But it's actually a husband and wife operation.

On the south shore of Brittany, in Lorient. Mainly known as a French navy base.

The California Cab served to J on my YVR-YYZ flight yesterday was pretty decent -- certainly better than the French stuff that one normally gets in the back of the bus. (One of the FA's came back through the curtain with a tray of cab and chardonnay towards the end of the flight: "it would be a shame to pour it down the drain").

IMO, when it's available, the black cod is hands down the best meal going in the front.

Fwiw if you use the feedback form on ac.com and give a positive report they do read them. I don't know if the staff get compensated in any way but it can't hurt. There were some reports that positive notes go in their employee files just like negative ones and can help them out.

I know some airlines (Delta?) use a bonus system where the staff enter the certificate number into a web site for credits and then if they get enough they can cash in the credits for things like ipods. So I wouldn't waste a certificate from another airline on a symbolic gesture.

A YYZ gate agent greeting pax? Say it isn't so! There are some cranky ones there...one in particular stands out in my mind - not in a good way either. Most are surly or just mumble I find. Perhaps that's just me.

Never heard of this - but would love to receive some of these in my Elite package that could be used for phenomenal crew, as long as they were worth something.

I've had pretty decent duck served by AC in the past.

(Not rare but not completely overcooked).

AC did do this - I'm thinking seven or eight years ago. Gave out a couple.

Would love to see them back.

Next time ask for the smart chicken.:D

Of course the smart chicken probably is still alive, faking it as a rooster.

I think most of my experience has been not great (but I guess its the norm in NA) so I try to make my interaction with the the staff as little as possible. Most recent example was my trip from YYZ to YVR. I precisely packed and weighed two bags (on a digital scale) so they were under 50 Lbs. Somehow I could check in online had to do it manually and when I put my bag on the AC scale it showed the weight on one bag at 58 lbs I was taken aback as I had check it on two scales (one digital one at home and one old school at the gym in the building I live in) so I said I will repack and moved aside. Opened the bag and I decided to giver it another try on the empty machine next to me and behold it showed the weight exact 50 lbs. What an easy way to swindle money!! I bet half of the people there paid because there machine was conveniently off by 8 lbs and the gov supports this monster by our tax payers money! tsk tsk.