Swanhunter

Very true, especially in the cheaper classes. They tried a trial with BD a few years using sandwiches, and it fell down on cost. With the way food is pre-cooked and rewarmed many ready meals - M&S or otherwise - would not be suitable.

If you were M&S, would you want your brand tarnished by association with BA?

LapLap

LHR-SFOCommented on twice - something is definitely being done right.

Raffles

For some reason, curry works exceptionally well on planes. Best economy meal I ever had was a curry on BA. I also had one in F going out to Cairo last month which was excellent.

jhm

Altitude desensitises your sense of smell and/or taste so spicy food like curry tastes good and everything else is just bland.

Gaz

Curry generally works well re-heated - a lot of curry microwave meals can be pretty good, sometimes even better than average takaway ones. I don't think the same can be said for, say, a fillet mignon and vegtables.

Teece

Mrs Teece had a fantastic curry in F LHR-YVR last month as well. Very tasty indeed, from the small sample she allowed me.

NickB

Well, there is burger and there is burger. He probably has in mind a home made one with home ground quality meat, but you are not going to get that in an airport.

Clearly, some things are going to work better in the air than others. Grilled meats are usually a waste of time. not suitable for reheating and cannot be cooked well in the confine of a galley. Ditto with white fish. Too delicate and too demanding in terms of precision cooking.

The things that work reasonably well are dishes that are fairly tolerant of overcooking/overheating, such as braised meats or, even better, stew-type dishes. Currys fall into that category. Many thai dishes also work reasonably well and so do some French classics: variations on the theme of daube, boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin as long as you use a more gamey bird rather than chicken. I imagine that cassoulet would probably also work OK and so would some classic English dishes such as sausage and mash. I still remember a superb lamb shank on a bmi flight to ORD a few years ago.

The other thing that can work well, albeit more in the starter category rather than main course, are those that do not need cooking in the air. Smoked salmon makes a reasonable starter and so does foie gras. A starter that remains imprinted in my memory is an excellent ceviche on an Avianca flight a few years back. Among the thing that don't work, imo, whether in the savoury or sweet mode, are pastry-based dishes. So out with pies, tourtes, tartlets, etc...

From a marketing point of view, I suspect that part of the problem is that many things that work well tend not to be terribly fashionable dishes and have a rather old-fashioned/70s feel to them and so are ruled out. A mistake, imo.

LapLap

The highlight of my Indian meal in UA Y was the vegetables themselves.
Rice with a potato and green bean & onion curry – fabulous! Tasted really fresh, like something from Rasa. Nothing like a microwave meal.
This was accompanied with a small container of lime pickle and a tub of natural yoghurt.

There was a very sweet pistachio square which would have ordinarily been too rich for me - but the FAs gave me a spare tub of vanilla ice cream and eaten together they made a fine dessert.

The food I had on my return in C was a disappointment in comparison.

It's something about Indian meals from LHR - I've had curries from JFK, CPH, YYZ and one of the LH hubs - all were horrid (the one from YYZ - in C on AZ was particularly vile - I was able to swap for a regular fish meal which I couldn't pre-order and that was good in comparison)