I was quite impressed with the CE offering on MAD-LHR, where the actual flying time was 1 hr 50 min. Consisted of a cold salad of 3 slices of chicken, a tablespoon of coronation chicken, 1 large prawn sitting on some sort of (? cucumber) coleslaw, a bit of lettuce and a half cherry tomato. The warm bread roll accompanied it well. The tray also contained a cheese plate that contained a single piece of Stilton, single oatmeal biscuit and some chutney. There was also a tiny but adequate dessert (cinnamon apple crumble).

Overall, i was not hungry afterwards and it was a lunchtime flight.

I do prefer the previous system of giving out individual 1/4 bottles of champagne rather than the current system of pouring from a large bottle. Under the old system, on a flight of around 2 hours, I would happily have enjoyed a couple of 1/4 bottles (and rarely a third one if my wife wasn't looking) but under the new system, with in excess of 50 passengers to serve on a 777 (both CW and F cabins used), I only managed 1 glass of champagne that was served just before my meal. No water was served nor were there any top ups of drinks. The crew were working hard so I think this was due to high volume of passengers. I did pop to the galley and get a second glass as the captain announced 40 min to landing.
Serving champagne from the full bottle may look more 'premium', but I think overall, BA will save more money this way as customers simply won't have the opportunity to drink as much as before.

Question now is whether to go for diabetic for the veggie sushi as it looks so yummy

Lhr Muc today the beef panino or the salad with prawns, had the panino but left most of it. Spoke with crew later, who admitted they thought the M&S is much better and indeed some CE customers buy on board and we agreed the new pastrami sandwich from M&S is really good. I said if I pay for CE I am not going to pay £5 for my meal as well, which they admitted was fair enough and even suggested that it would make more sense to make the M&S part of CE catering for free, to which I replied bingo.

If every passenger had a sandwich, bag of crisps, fruit salad and pack of Percy Pigs Alex Cruz would have a stroke.

I can imagine that :D the current panino and some ... on the side can't cost him more than £2 by my reckoning.

BA992 LHR-TXL, Brunch service. From what I remember not too much difference from the previous brunch offering aside from the presentation. The other option was the panini:

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BA987 TXL-LHR, Dinner service. Went for the cheese and tomato panini and I don't really understand what people are complaining about - I quite liked it. My only gripe is that its almost identical to what I was served on a TK flight between IST-SKP last month in Economy. But other than that, I enjoyed it more than what I was served on my previous CE flights in January.

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1) Hermolis does NOT supply LY (EL AL). There was a period when they did supply LY First Class meals (and no other classes) from LHR, but that ended about 10 years ago.

2) In my experience, having flown mainly EL AL for more than 10 years in business and first, and BA for the past 2 years, the BA meals in business and first (KSML) are more generous than the EL AL ones. Our children report the same for economy.

Another major difference, which is a significant bonus for very frequent flyers, is that EL AL always serve the same menu, whereas the KSML on BA has a degree of rotation built in, at least for the main course, but also to a lesser extent, for the starter and dessert.

No cheese with the meal? Thought they now offer cheese and dessert with the dinner service

as you can see in the Passover ksml brunch photo I uploaded upthread, hermiolis had mistakenly put el al salt and pepper on the tray instead of BA ones. I genuinely can't see how this can have happened if they do not supply LY?

Had this once - refused it 2nd and 3rd times. on GLA, CDG and TXL routes. Processed rubbish.

Afternoon meal is again the weakest: Sandwiches have reduced(!) in portion size. Ploughmans comes with the packaged, rock-hard rye bread - how can we be offered fresh warm bread at breakfast and with the dinner panini on a band 1, but not when it would be most appreciated, maybe they could throw in some scones while they're at it?

On all band 1s I've had it's been warm towel on the ground, food out on the trolley immediately after TO followed by drinks run - trays hand cleared and no issues with 2nd or even 3rd drinks run (even with 7 rows of CE on a 40 minute flight).

Ah. I forgot. I think that EL AL do use Hermolis for their Saturday night flights from London. All other flights have their meals sourced from TLV, but as they do not fly on the Sabbath (from Friday evening for 25 hours) those meals would be expired by the time of the return flight so they source them in London from Hermolis.

Indeed. While all meat that is cured with salt is technically "processed" that meat contains potassium nitrate/sodium nitrate preservative and I'm sure the Scotch egg will too, god knows what's in the "BA bread" and the "BA cake". Palma ham and to my recollection bresaola cannot contain those chemicals and are salt-cured only but quite expensive and would use up all the budget like the butterflied prawn. You can buy salt-cured bacon & ham that is free from chemicals from good butchers shops; I recall Hairy Bikers visiting a place in NI that did it.

Because like you said, its fine on a short-haul Y sector (your example incidentally has a block time less than LHR-TXL) but not in the #premium CE cabin except ultra short routes like LHR-MAN where this is seen as an upgrade by some. This is basically a plated version of the domestic breakfast panini/bun which at least had some meat in it (£££). It's just stodge. What is that on the little plate? BA Coleslaw?

Domestic Low Lactose Dinner
 

Flying back to LHR tomorrow then connecting to MAN on an evening flight (in CE).

Can't book a special meal online so Mr M17SST called the gold line;

The - verbatim - response was:

"It's buy on board so you have to pay for it"

Explained we were in CE.

"It's only a 40 minute flight, you'll get whatever we've loaded on the plane"

Asked if that was the case for vegetarians etc.

Was put on hold.

"It's a bacon roll or a croissant and fruit"

Asked if that was definitely the dinner menu as it sounds like breakfast.

"Yes, definitely".

Hung up and I called the GGL line.

"Meal choices aren't available on this flight"

Asked to check.

"Oh yes I think we can do that - I'll try and see how".


Whole exchange was baffling. I think I've got a low lactose dinner booked for LHR-MAN but not entirely sure what I'll end up with!

They were serving 1/4 bottles of Champagne on my recent LHR EDI flight