Adam Smith

This thread is to report on and discuss in-flight food and beverage for all Air Canada flights in Business Class, also known as Signature Class, outside of North America. From a meal perspective, “North America” includes “Sun” destinations such as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Post your menus, photos, questions, and opinions in this thread. To the extent updates are needed to these initial posts, please advise @Adam Smith via PM. If you post a menu and/or photos, please add a listing to the wiki in the format detailed in the wiki. PLEASE MAKE SOME SUGGESTIONS ON AN APPROPRIATE FORMAT

In order to keep information relevant it is expected that this thread (and its companions on other locations/classes of service) will be periodically refreshed – for example, at the end of 2021, this thread may be closed, and a new thread on the same topic (with the same information from the first few posts) may be created.

COVID NOTE: For most of the pandemic, AC has been offering significantly reduced meal service. As the world starts to normalize, AC is also normalizing its meal service. The posts below largely describe the normal, pre-COVID world, to which we are slowly returning. However, for the time being, there may be inconsistencies. Please feel free to discuss these inconsistencies and current service levels here.

Overview of AC North America J meal service
AC offers several different types of food and beverage service on its intra-North America flights:
• Premium Long-Haul (“PLH”) service is offered on select routes deemed premium by AC (YVR/YYC/YEG-YYZ/YUL/YOW, YVR/YYC-EWR, YYZ/YUL-SFO/LAX)
• Signature Service is offered on widebody aircraft on PLH routes
• A basic service is offered on all other routes

Breakfast is served on flights departing [xxx]-[xxx]. Lunch/dinner is served on all other departures.

Full meals are served on flights above 2.5 hours block time. On shorter flights, a snack is served rather than a full meal.

Meal selections change frequently, typically every month, although many items have been in the rotation for years and reappear over and over again.

Adam Smith

Warm nuts (mostly almonds with a few cashes) are served during the pre-meal beverage service.

For breakfast. PLH offers three entrée choices:

• Pancakes with chicken sausage
• Omelette
• Fruit plate

For lunch/dinner, there are usually four entrée choices:

• Beef or lamb
• Chicken
• Fish
• Vegetarian, often pasta

Cheese course

Dessert consists of either:

• Something sweet like a cake or brownie
• Bowl of fruit

Unlike basic meal service, when the tray is brought to the passenger, it will not have the entrée. The passenger will be given a few minutes to eat their salad and bread before the hot entrée is brought out. Trays are cleared after the entrée is finished and dessert is served on its own a short time after that.

Adam Smith

On most flights (both short and long), a snack basket will be offered sometime after the meal has been served (on TCONs, it may be offered multiple times).

The snack basket typically consists of:

• Lindt 70% dark chocolate bars
• Miss Vickie’s 50% reduced fat Original flavour chips
• Kit Kat chocolate bars
• are there other items typically in there?

At times, the snack basket items will not be available for one reason or another, and a snack basket may be assembled from other items, usually from the Y BoB offering, such as Pringles, Hershey’s Mix, etc.

Ill-informed or misleading Service Directors may say that the snack basket offering has been updated and this is the new standard going forward, but true changes to the snack basket offering are incredibly rare. The Lindt 70% and Miss Vickie’s chips have been consistently present since the snack baskets were first introduced nearly a decade ago, and the most major change was to swap out Lindt milk chocolate bars for the Kit Kats several years ago.

Adam Smith

Non-alcoholic

• Water
• Coffee
• Tea
• Fruit juices (orange, apple)
• Soft drinks (Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Sprite, Canada Dry ginger ale, AM I MISSING ANYTHING?)
• WHAT ELSE? TONIC WATER? CLUB SODA? V8? CLAMATO? I ONLY DRINK DIET COKE, WATER, AND JUICE…

Alcoholic

• Vodka [SMIRNOFF?]
• Scotch (Johnnie Walker Black)
• Rum (what is it, Bacardi?)
• Molson Canadian
• Heineken
• Rotating red wine selection
• Rotating white wine selection
• [WHAT ELSE AM I MISSING? GIN, PROBABLY? IS IT BEEFEATER? IS THERE SPARKLING WINE? MAYBE OTHER THINGS?]

24left

As a few of us have noted - with and without photos - the Texas Chicken is still there. From another thread:


Thanks to @mimo123 who posted a link to an interesting article in the Premium Economy meal thread, I noted some comments from Andrianna Pischos, manager of catering product design at AC.

I always assumed the Texas Chicken has been served on every afternoon eastbound transcon since December because AC bought a lifetime supply from somewhere. Well, she said "we look at what can be sustained from a supply chain perspective", so.....

Best line in the article was "Pischos says that Air Canada does have plans to launch new food “enhancements” later this summer". (ok, maybe AC FT has affected my ability to see the word "enhancement" in a positive light. LOL)
.

canforce

Recent flight in J from Toronto to Edmonton.

I could have done without the spinach (personal taste only) but overall it was really good (other than the cold bread). I absolutely loved the cheesecake.





Full report on the trip here: A Trip Down Memory Lane - AC J YEG to YYZ - FlyerTalk Forums

brewster

Looking at the menu options on ac.com pasta appears to be a replacement for the chicken. Reviewing of the new menus from YYZ there are 4 different choices of pasta on the J menus.

capedreamer

Ugh. Why. AC's pasta dishes are so heavy and unhealthy.

EdmFlyBoi

Pasta going west, chicken going east. It sure isn't great when you fly one way in the afternoon and the other way in the morning. It leads to very little variety.

24left

@capedreamer
But, but, but, they are also non-meat meals for those so inclined.....when multiple choice was available.

That said, I went sifting through my years of AC meals and I present you with AC Pasta on a Plane

This was YYZ-FRA in 2016



This was YYZ-PHX rouge Jan 2017. Apologies for the bumpy ride.



This was YVR-YYZ Nov 2017



YVR-HKG in March 2018



YVR-YYZ March 2018




YVR-TPE April 2018




TPE-YVR Sept 2018




There was also an era where the chef had an obsession with mushrooms and there was one pasta dish with a heavy cream sauce and multiple varieties, none of which were edible. lol. I couldn't find the photo.
.

capedreamer

I'm all for including a pasta dish for those who don't eat meat. It's an easy and cheap way to check off the vegetarian box.

But if it's the only main offered, that's lazy and disappointing IMHO.

brewster

Agreed it's lazy and a major disappointment to anyone who doesn't like/eat pasta.

canadiancow

I find it a little ironic that you're completely in favor of an easy and cheap solution to a problem ... as long as you're not impacted by it.

I like good pasta. I like good vegetarian meals. But if it's going to be bad either way, I'd rather have meat. Or at least a choice.

capedreamer

I actually agree with this statement wholeheartedly, so not sure what’s ironic about my statement.

In my ideal world, I’d like AC to offer a choice of a high quality meat dish and a high quality vegetarian dish on every flight over a certain length. I’d like that vegetarian dish to not be pasta, but if it has to be, fine. I certainly wouldn’t summarize my position as “completely in favour”. But only offering a crappy pasta dish with no choice is really disappointing.

The Lev

I'm assuming (not having flown it personally), that you'll get a decent veg meal flying to/from DEL and BOM.