Jean-Baptiste Legrand

I have only had the Hermolis kosher meals on Club Europe flights, and they were delicious ... does anyone know if their long haul Club World kosher meals are equally good?

bluemoon68

Kosher meals stopped on the Friday and started again by the Sunday. Given that the factory would have been closed over Saturday, the actual stoppage was very limited.

binman

Oy vey!

LCSinTexas

I feel the long distance KSML are as good as the CE flights.

Possibly even better.

LcS

orbitmic

I personally don't find the Hermiolis meals delicious, but I do find them better than regular CW meals currently, and they are systematically a lot more generous (the regular CW starter "cup" is particularly ridiculous to be honest).

Note that the key difference between short and long haul is that CE meals are round catered, so you will get very consistent Hermolis meals regardless of where your flight originates (for the same reason, KSML is not available for nightstop flights breakfast, ie typically very early flights from outstations). By contrast, long haul KSML (all classes) are loaded locally, so whilst Hermolis provides the meals ex-London, the quality on inbound flights can vary a lot and, from my limited experience of trying a few of them and talking to others, can be very poor from many airports/regions.

Jzlerner

But for reference I'm Jewish so always order kosher meals. Very happy with them, they do seem to be very big portion wise and always taste very good. When flying with business associates (not Jewish) I know a few of them do order kosher meals because they prefer them to the "regular offerings.

Two pet peeves:
1) due to Jewish law they have to be doubly wrapped so this does cause a lot of plastic wrapping everywhere which is unavoidable but does become an issue when not cleaned up quickish.
2) the food is more or less the same regardless whether it's in first or economy. It'll be with better tableware and with a starter but the main is the same as in economy. Not necessarily a problem but I have noticed other airlines using the same caterer out of LHR (AA/VS) do provide better food (eg: meatballs in economy, rib eye in business). Feel like BA could do better
​​​​​​

EJetter

Rib eye does sometimes make an appearance in Club Europe.

orbitmic

I am sure that I order KSML less than you but I must say that when I have, I must say that my experience has been different from you on that. In J, on KSML, I have had lamb shank (same ingredient as current "regular" BA J and F), beef fillet, salmon, duck breast, none of which tend to feature in Y.

unfrequentflyer

This is definitely not a Rib Eye.

salut0

Quite. It looks almost as bad as the Finnair vegetarian meal I had on HEL-AGP.

There are excellent looking photos of kosher meals in other threads. I seem to remember seeing one of a sliced duck breast that looked particularly good. But this is not one of them.

cosmo74

Does anyone know what the CW Kosher breakfast offering consists of?

unfrequentflyer

There are a lot of detail that go into a kosher meal that we are not aware of. You can't just buy a steak from the supermarket, fried it up and call it kosher. It is just not cost effective for an airline to provide kosher meals. Most likely the water, drinks, fruit and salad can be considered kosher. If you have to have kosher food, don't even trust the bakery products. I have seen lard going into muffin and pastry.

msm2000uk

1) The Hermolis meals are all cooked from frozen, so the fact that the kitchen closes at times, makes no difference to the ability for meals to be delivered to BA; they're delivered in bulk, so if your Kosher meal isnt provided, it's because BA didnt load it.

2) The rule with the Kosher meal has always been quantity over quality, so expecting any sort of presentation is laughable.

3) For those who live in London, and thus know Hermolis, we know what they stand for; it's why BA (and other large scale companies - the health service for example) use them.

4) Kosher meat prices are currently through the roof; yes pricing for meat is high across the board, but Kosher meat has over doubled. I'm already seeing organisations trim down their Kosher meals, and move to vegetarian options, so don't be surprised if Hermolis start changing the ratio of meat to vegetables.

M

Jzlerner

​​​​​​Perhaps it was a coincidence! All I know is that I was on a flight last month, had a good meal, although I can't remember exactly what it was, after which I decided to take a bedtime stroll down the plane before going to sleep. Happened to notice a cousin of mine in Y (had no idea he was on the plane) and looked at his meal. Identical to my main course albeit less elegant. Not saying it happens every time but not a rare occurrence either in my experience.

Jzlerner

Pretty much correct. I'm not going to delve into the exact laws but three things to point out:

1) fruit and veg is kosher HOWEVER must be prepared with a clean uncontaminated knife.
2) most drinks are kosher, at least the mainstream cokes and Pepsi's and everything those giants make.
3) lard. Lard from a pig is not kosher, however, kosher versions of lard from kosher animals eg a cow are available.

I wouldn't be able to say whether it's cost effective for airlines. On the one hand it definitely costs them more than regular meals. How much more? I don't think anyone can accurately price that as it depends on too many factors. However, if BA stopped offering kosher I would without a doubt switch to another airline.