Singapore Airlines is so proud of its in-flight food that they’ve published an all-star cookbook to celebrate. Nick Harman flies Business Class to Singapore and back in just 48 hours to taste the food and to find out how it’s all done. Jet lag what let jag?
The SATs is a giant food factory, but then it needs to be to produce over 50,000 in-flight meals a day. Scrupulously clean and with tight security, it has kitchens for all the major ethnic groups as well as dedicated vegetarian and Halal areas. Pride of the centre though are the kitchens for First Class and Business Class. Here the process is almost identical to a top kitchen in London – the meals are cooked as if about to be served and then swiftly blast-chilled to be ready for flight. The wide-ranging menus are devised by the ten members of the Singapore Airlines Culinary Panel, ten top international chefs including our own Gordon Ramsay.
Tony Chai Head Chef of SATS points out that this not simply a PR exercise; the meals the chefs devise are exactly what get served on board. ‘We change nothing except the portion size to accommodate the practical demands,’ he explains as he shows us around. ‘These meals are the chefs’ original creations, our teams have been to their kitchens all over the world to see the cooking done first hand and the chefs have come here to fine tune.’
Chefs under pressure
The result is to perfectly recreate the dining experience in the air, except perhaps for the kid behind kicking your seat, where pressurisation and dryness combine to dull the taste buds. This means seasoning has to be adjusted to compensate and only by eating in the test cabin can the chefs properly appreciate how much change is required. Seasoning that would be unacceptable on the ground is required in the air, how much though is down to the chef’s own palate and his experience in the pressurised room.
The same is true for the wines and so one of SIA’s wine consultants, Michael Hill- Smith, refines his short list in the test cabin to so he too can be confident that the wines he’s choosing will work at 35,000 feet. It seems an extraordinary amount of effort and expense to go to for an in-flight meal, but Singapore Airlines is an extraordinary airline.
The biggest plane in the world
In fact A380 doesn’t do anything like a normal aircraft, it has two jetways to service its two decks so boarding is faster, with Business Class as easy as walking into a hotel reception. On take off it doesn’t hurtle down the runway like Jeremy Clarkson with his teeth on fire, it ambles along for a bit in almost total silence and then casually lifts off as if falling upwards, the massive Rolls Royce engines delivering enormous thrust. In flight it’s rather like being on large luxurious yacht; no rattles, no vibration, no turbulence, just the gentle swish of the Singapore Girls moving up the aisle to distribute the food to your luxury seat. The Business Class seats are in fact small leather sofas with footrests, plumped cushions, room to slide about and cubby holes for all your bits and bobs, as well as mains power for laptops and iPods. The in-flight entertainment is impressive, but if you want you can plug in a media stick and watch your own
The A380 is claimed to be 50% less noisy inside than a 747 and increased cabin pressure and oxygen apparently means less travel fatigue. My twelve hour flight was totally relaxing and without strain. In fact I bounded off the plane at the far end and hurtled out into the night to go street food eating with old friends despite now being 7 hours ahead of UK time
Haute cuisine 30,000 feet high
Everything is served on bespoke china and presentation is first class in Business Class. All the cabin staff are shown how the dish should look by photos and can take training days at SATs where they join the cooking classes. Apparently these are so popular there’s now a long waiting list of people waiting to take them.
Even breakfast comes as if in a boutique hotel. The LED mood lighting in the cabin subtly changes to a daylight feel and as you stir in your full-length bed fresh orange juice arrives. My choice of Full English had all a man could want after a strenuous 8 hours watching movies on a 17”screen. There’s sausage, egg, potato cake and all the trimmings plus a nice cup of tea of your choice. With the porthole blinds now open and blue skies as far as the eye could see the A380 swung into the descent toward Singapore and its home base
Back to reality
Back at Heathrow, fed, watered and still remarkably unfatigued or stressed after all that flying, I got on a hot sweaty tube and wished I was back in the air again. The only problem with Singapore Airlines Business Class is that you never want to travel any other way again.
You can read more about Above and Beyond, a collection of recipes from the Singapore Airlines International Culinary Panel here. It’s a book that reflects the remarkable care and quality of SIA’s in-flight food and profits from sales of the book will go to the Singapore Community Chest, a very worthy charity.
We have a selection of the recipes here.