Alain Ducasse and Cooking on the Concorde (long)
Jan 13, 2000 | 7:01 pm
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Alain Ducasse and Cooking on the Concorde (long)
I posted this in the Buzz because I thought it was a general interest article.
Stimpy: Did/will you take any AF Concorde from 12/15-1/15 and have a personal take on the food?
January 13, 2000
Business A Famed Chef's Effort to Create
Haute Cuisine Aloft Hits Turbulence
By SHELLY BRANCH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ABOARD THE CONCORDE -- Alain Ducasse was a bit disappointed with the food he recently had while flying on the Concorde from New York to Paris. Although the truffle-flecked scrambled eggs were pretty good, he thought the foie gras terrine was overdone and some of the entrees were bland. "They didn't have enough salt," Mr. Ducasse says.
He ought to know: He created the meal.
In recent weeks, Air France has been trying to pull off a culinary tour de force on its supersonic service. Stung by complaints about Concorde cuisine, the airline retained the services of the 43-year-old Mr. Ducasse, chef at both the Restaurant Alain Ducasse in Paris and the Louis XV in Monte Carlo, each of which has three Michelin stars -- the best there is. The goal: Duplicate a three-star French meal in the sky, right down to a hand-rolled praline-and-cream cake.
And? ... Mr. Ducasse wasn't the only underwhelmed diner on that New York-Paris flight, which inaugurated the menu last month. Ian Blaskey, a British passenger, said the food was "lovely" compared with the "stewed" filet mignon served on his New York-bound flight, but he still had reservations. "You can't create on a plane what you can on the ground," he says. "So don't even try."
To see how even a renowned chef can fall short of perfection in the sky helps explain why no-frills airline food on subsonic flights is no better than it is. "The limitations!" sighs Mr. Ducasse, and proceeds to tick off a list including the plane's tiny galleys, the dry cabin air, the speed of the takeoff and the preflight cooking air travel requires. "The effect of immediate cooking is just not there," he says.
Concorde passengers are a finicky bunch, with some justification: They are paying as much as $10,000 apiece for a New York-Paris round-trip ticket. Mr. Ducasse's marching orders from Air France were to oversee, from mid-December to the middle of this month, a brunch for the New York-Paris flight and a dinner for the flight back.
To ensure the meals were special, the airline gave him a per-passenger food budget of $90, compared with the Concorde's usual $55. (U.S. carriers spend about $3.87 to feed the average flier.) Air France also agreed to supply him with a host of fancy ingredients -- black truffles, blue lobsters from Brittany and caviar, to name a few -- and some special accouterments. For a warm truffle sauce to be drizzled over his Paris-bound legumes, the chef demanded special cups that would fit the Concorde's tiny, cagelike oven trays. It took weeks of searching to locate vessels to his liking. For the New York-bound service, Mr. Ducasse wanted bread only from Paris's Kayser Boulangerie, which the airline chauffeured to the airport each morning. Taxi fare for the baguettes: $100.
Bad Conditions
But all the preparation in the world couldn't change the realities of air travel. Most commercial planes, with small galleys and a limited staff, make it logistically tough to serve a fine meal. Aboard the narrow Concorde, conditions are worse. Its two kitchens, one in front, one in back, are about half the size of those found in most coach cabins.
How, Mr. Ducasse wondered, would he reheat his dishes without stewing the ingredients? How would he keep a cold terrine cold, but not too cold? He also worried that the galleys were too small for flight attendants to "finish" a dish, say, with a special garnish or sauce.
One other discovery: A special seafood salad he wanted was out of the question. The Concorde's thrust on takeoff alone would have made a mess of the carefully arranged greens.
Perhaps the biggest reality check came at Jet Chef, the catering facility at Charles de Gaulle airport that supplies Air France and other airlines. The assembly-line kitchens are institutional. And the cooks, who wear green face masks and surgical garb, were unused to preparing haute cuisine. "We had a lot of training to do," says Patrick Ogheard, a Ducasse assistant who helped tutor 16 hand-picked cooks from New York and Paris. Apart from teaching them the finer points of veal preparation, as well as the different cooking times required for lobster tails and claws, the Ducasse team stressed consistency.
"That was the hardest part -- to get them to try to make everything perfect, every time," Mr. Ogheard says.
Meal making at Jet Chef for the Concorde's 100 passengers begins 24 hours in advance of the flight. The Ducasse menu requires a staff of eight, and about three times the usual catering man hours. At 11 a.m., two cooks are swaying over a giant saute pan, searing veal filets, per Mr. Ducasse's instructions, in an oil-and-butter mixture for two minutes on each side.
The veal is prime, and plump. But unlike the meats at Mr. Ducasse's elegant digs, these half-cooked filets will be diverted from skillet to a giant stainless-steel "blast chiller." They won't be "done" until they are reheated on board.
Preparations are efficient, if inelegant. A large apparatus drips an aspic that coats triangular pieces of foie gras on a stick. After receiving the attention of various sous-chefs and sauciers, the Ducasse foods enter a room where they are stacked in plebeian metal trays bound for the Concorde.
For the inaugural run of his menu to Paris, Mr. Ducasse ignored most passengers and instead sat crouched in the back of the plane, where he tried all five courses, including each of his four entrees: the scrambled eggs, the terrine, the winter legumes and a tomato and truffle lobster dish.
The passengers, dining on the Concorde's customary white linen set with Christofle flatware, seemed generally blase about the food. Lucien Pellat-Finet, a fashion designer, gave his meal only a passing mark. An 11-year-old boy was one of the few to clean his plate, although some were saving their appetites for the caviar (osetra) and champagne (Veuve Clicquot, 1990) served prior to landing.
An advertising executive who didn't want to be named declined the meal service altogether, explaining: "I take this plane twice a month, and I find the best advice is never to eat."
Write to Shelly Branch at [email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/r...6236253787.djm
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:[email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For information about subscribing, go to http://wsj.com
Stimpy: Did/will you take any AF Concorde from 12/15-1/15 and have a personal take on the food?
January 13, 2000
Business A Famed Chef's Effort to Create
Haute Cuisine Aloft Hits Turbulence
By SHELLY BRANCH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ABOARD THE CONCORDE -- Alain Ducasse was a bit disappointed with the food he recently had while flying on the Concorde from New York to Paris. Although the truffle-flecked scrambled eggs were pretty good, he thought the foie gras terrine was overdone and some of the entrees were bland. "They didn't have enough salt," Mr. Ducasse says.
He ought to know: He created the meal.
In recent weeks, Air France has been trying to pull off a culinary tour de force on its supersonic service. Stung by complaints about Concorde cuisine, the airline retained the services of the 43-year-old Mr. Ducasse, chef at both the Restaurant Alain Ducasse in Paris and the Louis XV in Monte Carlo, each of which has three Michelin stars -- the best there is. The goal: Duplicate a three-star French meal in the sky, right down to a hand-rolled praline-and-cream cake.
And? ... Mr. Ducasse wasn't the only underwhelmed diner on that New York-Paris flight, which inaugurated the menu last month. Ian Blaskey, a British passenger, said the food was "lovely" compared with the "stewed" filet mignon served on his New York-bound flight, but he still had reservations. "You can't create on a plane what you can on the ground," he says. "So don't even try."
To see how even a renowned chef can fall short of perfection in the sky helps explain why no-frills airline food on subsonic flights is no better than it is. "The limitations!" sighs Mr. Ducasse, and proceeds to tick off a list including the plane's tiny galleys, the dry cabin air, the speed of the takeoff and the preflight cooking air travel requires. "The effect of immediate cooking is just not there," he says.
Concorde passengers are a finicky bunch, with some justification: They are paying as much as $10,000 apiece for a New York-Paris round-trip ticket. Mr. Ducasse's marching orders from Air France were to oversee, from mid-December to the middle of this month, a brunch for the New York-Paris flight and a dinner for the flight back.
To ensure the meals were special, the airline gave him a per-passenger food budget of $90, compared with the Concorde's usual $55. (U.S. carriers spend about $3.87 to feed the average flier.) Air France also agreed to supply him with a host of fancy ingredients -- black truffles, blue lobsters from Brittany and caviar, to name a few -- and some special accouterments. For a warm truffle sauce to be drizzled over his Paris-bound legumes, the chef demanded special cups that would fit the Concorde's tiny, cagelike oven trays. It took weeks of searching to locate vessels to his liking. For the New York-bound service, Mr. Ducasse wanted bread only from Paris's Kayser Boulangerie, which the airline chauffeured to the airport each morning. Taxi fare for the baguettes: $100.
Bad Conditions
But all the preparation in the world couldn't change the realities of air travel. Most commercial planes, with small galleys and a limited staff, make it logistically tough to serve a fine meal. Aboard the narrow Concorde, conditions are worse. Its two kitchens, one in front, one in back, are about half the size of those found in most coach cabins.
How, Mr. Ducasse wondered, would he reheat his dishes without stewing the ingredients? How would he keep a cold terrine cold, but not too cold? He also worried that the galleys were too small for flight attendants to "finish" a dish, say, with a special garnish or sauce.
One other discovery: A special seafood salad he wanted was out of the question. The Concorde's thrust on takeoff alone would have made a mess of the carefully arranged greens.
Perhaps the biggest reality check came at Jet Chef, the catering facility at Charles de Gaulle airport that supplies Air France and other airlines. The assembly-line kitchens are institutional. And the cooks, who wear green face masks and surgical garb, were unused to preparing haute cuisine. "We had a lot of training to do," says Patrick Ogheard, a Ducasse assistant who helped tutor 16 hand-picked cooks from New York and Paris. Apart from teaching them the finer points of veal preparation, as well as the different cooking times required for lobster tails and claws, the Ducasse team stressed consistency.
"That was the hardest part -- to get them to try to make everything perfect, every time," Mr. Ogheard says.
Meal making at Jet Chef for the Concorde's 100 passengers begins 24 hours in advance of the flight. The Ducasse menu requires a staff of eight, and about three times the usual catering man hours. At 11 a.m., two cooks are swaying over a giant saute pan, searing veal filets, per Mr. Ducasse's instructions, in an oil-and-butter mixture for two minutes on each side.
The veal is prime, and plump. But unlike the meats at Mr. Ducasse's elegant digs, these half-cooked filets will be diverted from skillet to a giant stainless-steel "blast chiller." They won't be "done" until they are reheated on board.
Preparations are efficient, if inelegant. A large apparatus drips an aspic that coats triangular pieces of foie gras on a stick. After receiving the attention of various sous-chefs and sauciers, the Ducasse foods enter a room where they are stacked in plebeian metal trays bound for the Concorde.
For the inaugural run of his menu to Paris, Mr. Ducasse ignored most passengers and instead sat crouched in the back of the plane, where he tried all five courses, including each of his four entrees: the scrambled eggs, the terrine, the winter legumes and a tomato and truffle lobster dish.
The passengers, dining on the Concorde's customary white linen set with Christofle flatware, seemed generally blase about the food. Lucien Pellat-Finet, a fashion designer, gave his meal only a passing mark. An 11-year-old boy was one of the few to clean his plate, although some were saving their appetites for the caviar (osetra) and champagne (Veuve Clicquot, 1990) served prior to landing.
An advertising executive who didn't want to be named declined the meal service altogether, explaining: "I take this plane twice a month, and I find the best advice is never to eat."
Write to Shelly Branch at [email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
URL for this Article: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/r...6236253787.djm
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:[email protected]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
For information about subscribing, go to http://wsj.com
