A tray covered in indeterminable beige items. A vegan meal of a single banana, wrapped in plastic. Stale sandwiches, limp vegetables, frozen cheese. Horrendous airline food has become the stuff of late-night comedy, but these days the punch line isn’t always landing in the same way.
Aviation firms—both private fractional providers and commercial airlines—are following the trends of the restaurant industry by not only offering better food and sometimes bringing big-name chefs to the table but also by paying attention to provenance, locality, and seasonality. BizAv leader VistaJet changes its menus seasonally, sourcing from 7,000 providers around the world. Swiss Air, the earliest adopter of local cuisine, started its Taste of Switzerland program more than two decades ago, with foods from its 26 cantons. Turkish Airlines’s business-class menu is going all in with Mediterranean dishes such as adana kebabs, lahmacun flatbread, and köpoğlu eggplant spread, with local ingredients that are never frozen.
works with high-quality ingredients, sourced from 7,000 suppliers from around the world, to create menus that shift with the seasons. For spring/summer, expect plates of wild salmon cured in Isle of Skye whisky and served with a German cambozola blue cheese mousse; French spring lamb stew; and seabass from Chile with confit tomatoes.—from Zeffirino in Genoa to Origin Grill in Singapore.