The exacting, rewarding science behind magnificent food in the skies
If you’ve flown much, you’ll know that the dining options you are offered, once the seatbelt lights are turned off, can differ vastly in variety and quality.
While many travellers are happy with standard snacks when it comes to short-haul flights, the promise of high-quality food is a significant selling point for most long-haul international carriers. So much so that the research, planning, and testing of menus and wine-lists is as intensive as you would find in a top restaurant, the results of which can be spectacular.
Industry experts argue that there is more to being an airline catering virtuoso than making food taste good, or on par with a fancy restaurant.
Qatar Airways Catering Services Vice President, Shashank Bhardwaj, explains that the great leveller is the physics of being aloft in a pressurised tube. “Whether you’re in the Business Class cabin or in Economy Class, you’re subject to the same limitations imposed by physics. The most important of these is humidity, or rather lack of it; until recently the air inside pressurised aircraft cabins had to be very dry in order to prevent corrosion. This dryness cuts our sense of taste and smell by about a third, meaning that even well-prepared food can seem bland. It’s been described as having a similar effect to a head cold.”
He explains that two major advances have helped overcome this: “The first is the result of years of experimenting by chefs which led to the realisation that umami – the dense savoury flavour found in a variety of foods including charcuterie, spinach, Chinese cabbage, seaweed, soy sauce and tomatoes with a deep, red hue – helps win over senses dulled by dry air.
“Umami is arguably at its most intense in hard Parmigiano Regianno cheese, which is why lovers of Italian food consider their bowl of pasta incomplete without some shavings of it.”
The second development is innovation in design and materials, including carbon-fibre reinforced plastic in the fuselage of aircraft, which allows air inside to be more humid without risking structural damage.
Several other factors are also accommodated. The first: getting the food onto the aircraft must take place within its flight schedule and the strict time constraints of other aspects of commercial aviation, including passengers embarking and disembarking; luggage and cargo being loaded and offloaded; and the aircraft being cleaned and refuelled.
Bhardwaj illustrates the complexity of airline catering by talking through some of the scale of Qatar Airways’ food and beverage operations. Last year alone, the airline utilised more than 5,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables. This equals to 13.5 tonnes a day. The 5-star airline also prepared and served more than 4,500 tonnes of poultry, meat and fish as part of the 350,000 gourmet meals prepared for its flights daily. All meals are meticulously prepared to accommodate dietary preferences of the demographic on specific routes.
In Doha, Qatar Airways’ home and hub, the food is prepared at Qatar Aircraft Catering Company’s (QACC) facilities that operates 24 hours and 7 days a week. QACC’s output requires a storage unit that covers 69,000 square metres, the world’s largest self-sufficient catering facility in a single building. The food produced for Qatar Airways, its lounges at the award-winning Hamad International Airport, and other airlines operating out of Doha, is transported to waiting aircraft in more than 200 trucks. All these activities take place in the context of what happens in the sky.
Qatar Airways’ catering offering is frequently recognised with awards and accolades, but Bhardwaj says it’s knowing that the airline’s exacting standards are met more than 350,000 times a day over hundreds of thousands of air-miles is what’s really fulfilling. “Eating and drinking well and travelling, whether for business or pleasure, are two of life’s joys. Enabling our valued customers to do both is as rewarding as it is demanding,” Bhardwaj concludes.