21Apr
Plane labelling
I love sharing tales of airplane meal glory and sorrow with you all. The stories always get a huge response and I think it taps into an experience with which most vegans can relate… being stuck somewhere with nothing to eat.
The latest instalment of Food In The Air comes courtesy of my partner, Josh, who just enjoyed this meal service between London and Istanbul.
Check out Josh’s meal below and then keep scrolling to find out what he has to say about it.
I have to hand it to British Airways and their current inflight catering company. I was impressed with the vegan meal on my recent flight from London Heathrow to Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport.
The first thing I noticed was a white slip of paper confirming I had a vegan meal and an explanation of what British Airways considers to be a vegan diet. Nice! In addition, the paper slip did something which I haven’t seen before. It described the actual dish I was being served. This is handy as in the past I’ve sometimes had to guess at what was under the foil wrap, whereas on this occasion I knew that I was eating a ‘Vegetable Tagine with Cous Cous’. Very nice it was, too. Peppers, aubergines, courgettes and green beans stewed to perfection in a tomatoey-herby sauce served with a tasty spiced cous cous with flaked almonds.The bread roll had the ingredients printed on the plastic sleeve confirming its vegan status and was paired perfectly with the Vegan Society certified margarine. The side salad and fruit salad were fairly unexceptional but perfectly acceptable.But I was beaming from ear-to-ear when I saw that they had given me an individual serving of soya milk! I fly fairly regularly and this is the first time I’ve ever been given my own serving of plant-based milk with an airline meal. Vegans of the world rejoice. No more black tea or coffee!Well done British Airways and Plane Catering.
This is really good to see! American Airlines’ vegan option is non-existent. They used to have one, but they recently “standardised” all their special meals, and they merged the vegan and vegetarian options into 1 – the only option now being vegetarian. Last year I flew BA out to the US and the vegan meal was great going out, but on the way back it was a codeshare with American, so a BA flight on an AA plane – the vegan option I had requested was nowhere to be seen, and the flight attendants didn’t care.
Now I’m envious. On a return flight from Toronto to Kigali last summer, on all six legs of the flights the vegan meal was curried lentils and chick peas on rice, with a non-vegan dessert and a sad few pieces of fruit. There was no soy milk to have with my tea.
That’s fantastic! I’ve never seen anything like that before either and I fly regularly as well! I am hoping to fly back to the UK on BA next week, so I’ll see what I get! 🙂