Kosher Raffles Meals
 

I just returned back to Melbourne (from London), and was very dissapointed to note that the kosher meal was pretty much a basic (kosher) economy class meal in a box. Totally incomparable to the regular meals. Here I was with a cardboard box with little bits and pieces of foods, while everyone else was served course after course on proper dishes, not to mention beatifully prepared food. Can't something be done?

Were you in a C or F class? If so, I would suggest that you write to SQ headquarters and demand for an apology letter and some sort of reimbursement of the service that you were supposed to get.

Kosher meals are sort of standardised. One airline won't differ much from the another.

You may *try* writing... but really, "Demand"????

Even on UA (gasp!), Kosher business class meals are served on regular business class china and include the same number of courses as the normal offering. UA gives the kosher caterer unused dishes from each class of service for the caterer to plate kosher meals. The cabin crew can then mix the dishes into the regular stock for dishwashing and reuse as part of the normal (non kosher) stock.

Obviously this takes a lot of coordination so if an airline has a low volume of kosher meal requests it may not be justified.

Charles

special meals should be class-specific
 

First of all, I believe that in general, if airlines offer special meals, they should make them class-specific. After all, someone sitting in F has paid (with $ or miles or certs, op ups notwithstanding) for F meals, not J or Y meals. I am vegetarian and know that many times, my VLML, VGML, AGML, or IVML main dish in F or C may not be that different from the Y version, but at least it's plated and presented correctly, and I get the same number of courses (and sometimes an extra small fruit dish) and experience as the regular F/C meal.

Now, concerning kosher meals, there may be another consideration - serving ware. I recall one of my Jewish friends keeping 2 sets of plates, utensils, etc. at home, so that when he entertains, he can serve kosher and non-kosher guests. The idea is that kosher food should be served on kosher plates. If that's the case (please chime in, as I'm not an expert on Jewish rules and traditions), then I see some validity in a throwaway cardbox box for Kosher meals. But then, back to my original point, they should have additional boxes for additional courses, so that the Kosher meal itself is as elaborate as the regular F/J meal.

I just re-read the above post and now understand that UA gets it right, by using brand new plates for Kosher meals, and then releasing them to serve non-kosher meals. Yes, I agree this would be logistically challenging, not to mention difficult to enforce.

Sorta right. It's not the plate that is or is not Kosher. Rather, meat and dairy are to be kept separate. So there are separate plates/utensils for dairy vs. meat.

Unless you flight with El Al or bring your own food and plates - nothing. It is essense of "real kosher" when, for example, KLM/AirFrance/... sets labelled as "kosher but not for passover, also halal it is" is weird idea and they are not real kosher

Do you have a photo? I've never seen a kosher meal a la Singapore Airlines.

Face palm!