For the vast majority of passengers airline food is the bland pap served on scheduled flights. For the world’s super-rich elites, airline food can be something else entirely. David Smith tucks in
In the rarefied world of the super-rich, Saudi princes, pop superstars, Premier League footballers and Hollywood actors order whatever food they like, whenever they like. The cost is irrelevant. If an essential ingredient can only be found thousands of miles away, the catering companies will have to fetch it.
Few airline catering companies are equipped to deal with the caprices of the mega-wealthy. They must have highly trained and flexible chefs, a complex and rapid logistics operation to track down unusual ingredients at short notice and kitchens located near the haunts of the super-wealthy.
Grands chefs
Legacy carriers that hang on to full, silver service menus for first and premium passengers tend to opt for headline, celebrity chefs to craft meals to complement the considerably higher ticket prices demanded.
Airlines can now spend as much as US$50 a person serving signature dishes from celebrity chefs to their first and premium passengers. Likewise, the wine menu can often cost an airline the same. Unlike coach passengers, first class and business class passengers often think about an airline’s food. Managers know that airlines can certainly lose a customer by offering a poor menu.
For instance, on Air France flights departing from Paris, meals crafted by Joël Robuchon, Régis Marcon, Guy Martin, Anne-Sophie Pic and Michel Roth are available. Their signature meals alternate every two months so regular passengers have something new to discover. At the same time, the airline’s wine list is updated every two months.
On flights provided by Air France departing from Los Angeles, New York and Washington and travelling to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, for a full year from March 2016, dishes have been created by Daniel Boulud, the renowned US-based Michelin-starred French chef. His flagship restaurant ‘Daniel’, listed as one of the top 10 restaurants in the world, is acclaimed for its cuisine and service. “Daniel Boulud brings creativity and soulfulness to dishes based in French technique and enlivened with global flavours and spices,” said the airline.
On long-haul Lufthansa flights from Germany, top chefs create dishes for the ‘Culinary Delights’ concept in first class. These chefs, who change every two months, belong to the top rank of the gourmet world and have all been awarded Michelin stars or Gault Millau toques. The German carrier also uses celebrity chefs, such as Diethard Urbansky, to create its menu.
Qantas has stayed with the same executive chef for 15 years. Neil Perry AM is an Australian chef and restaurateur who is the co-ordinator for Qantas Flight Catering under his company Rockpool Consulting.
In 2013, British Airways asked chef Heston Blumenthal to make umami a key ingredient in his attempt to add more flavour to first class and premium British Airways menus to counter the fact that passengers lose about 30% of their ability to taste as a result of extremely dry cabin conditions and high-altitude pressure inside airplanes.
Umami is an ingredient known as the ‘fifth basic sense’ after its discovery by the Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908.
Demanding clients
For charter and private aviation, catering for premium and first class service is a more bespoke, smaller scale operation than the legacy carriers.
In the US, three catering companies dominate this market. There is the pioneer in the field, New York-based Rudy’s Inflight Catering, Silver Lining in Florida and Air Gourmet, which has kitchens in both Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, in the UK, On Air Dining is a relative newcomer that has established itself in a remarkably short time.
Barry Saven, the South African-born president of Air Gourmet, says there are no limits to the challenges set by clients and the critical element in the success of his business in this niche is flexibility. “We are dealing with very privileged people and they can order animal parts that our chefs have never even heard of,” he said. “I had a Middle Eastern prince who wanted a white truffle sauce on his mashed potatoes and we couldn’t get fresh white truffles anywhere in the US. I had to get someone in Paris to source them and put them on a plane as unaccompanied luggage. A driver met the plane at LAX airport and brought it to the kitchen by which time we had a short time to prepare it. It cost a ridiculous amount of money, but he didn’t care.”
Hollywood’s movie stars are capable of making demands for meals that no ordinary mortal would contemplate eating. One renowned movie ‘tough guy’, who cannot be named because of the tradition of discretion in the luxury catering market, ordered a rattlesnake steak. “We worried for a moment that we wouldn’t be able to find it, but we sourced it in 20 minutes, had it delivered in 20 minutes and cooked it so it was ready an hour after the order came in,” Saven said.
Air Gourmet’s kitchen facilities are found at the intersection of two major Los Angeles freeways and a street away from Beverly Hills, home to actors and celebrities. Almost any ingredient can be sourced in LA at short notice by the logistics team and delivered by the fleet of Air Gourmet vehicles. Deliveries arrive at all times of the day or night.
“Our chefs work 24/7 and I don’t even have a key to the front door as it’s never shut. Rather than having 10 chefs on duty, which is normal, we might have only two in quiet periods, but never less. When we get highly complex orders, we might call people in on their days off.”
Air Gourmet started life in 1990 as a small business run by a former flight attendant. Saven saw the potential for growth and bought it in 1996. At that stage, Air Gourmet catered for 10 flights a day and now it caters for an average of 60 from its two bases. The nature of those flights varies widely. “One order might be for orange juice, an LA Times newspaper and yoghurt on a short flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Another could be a highly complex order for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a plane load flying to Europe, or Asia. That might involve 10 chefs working all day to complete it. The value of a flight ranges from as little as $200 to in excess of $100,000.”
Air Gourmet guards its reputation for quality food carefully. Whereas Air Culinaire Worldwide uses third-party local kitchens under its own name, Air Gourmet only puts its name to food cooked fresh in its kitchens. It does, however, have an affiliation with both Silver Lining, in Florida, and Rudy’s, in New York. All three companies recommend using their partner caterers on their home territories.
Network
The UK’s On Air Dining has become an unofficial member of the network and Air Gourmet advises its clients to use the Stansted Airport-based British caterer when they fly to London. This is a great mark of respect for a company that only began trading on October 1st, 2014.
On Air Di
ning’s clientele is similar to Air Gourmet’s. They are the unimaginably wealthy. “Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined as having £5-10 million in cash at their disposal. But most of our clients are even wealthier,” said Charlie Robinson, COO. “We cater for some of the richest people from Britain and around the world.”
London-born chef Daniel Hulme was the inspiration behind On Air Dining. Hulme had experienced luxury dining while employed as a chef at Scott’s of Mayfair and later he catered for the wealthy elites holidaying in Juan Les Pins in the South of France. But it wasn’t until he worked for some of the sailing teams in the Americas Cup in Valencia in 2007 that Hulme realised there was a gap in the market for a luxury caterer.
“He saw the niche because the food being served to the wealthy yacht owners on their private jets was of such a low standard,” said Robinson. “The catering companies thought they could buy a 40p Brakes chicken and throw on a coq au vin sauce, then charge £30 just because it was a private jet. Daniel saw they were getting a bum deal and decided to bring fine dining to the market.”
Hulme approached Alison Price Catering with the idea of starting an aviation wing. They liked the idea and Alison Price On Air was formed, which lasted four years. Hulme then decided to break away and formed On Air Dining in October 2014. Growth has been rapid. The company started with seven employees, but now it has 30 and it is only a couple of months away from being profitable. In March this year, it served 584 people on 131 flights. The average cost was £900 per flight.
Michelin-starred
Like its American counterparts, On Air Dining relies on highly trained chefs. Most have worked at Michelin-starred restaurants. The chefs use the technique of ‘sous vide’, a method of cooking that seals food in airtight plastic bags and places them in a steam cooker for longer than during normal cooking. “All restaurants use it for some parts of the menu, but we have taken ‘sous vide’ to another level by making sure all proteins and vegetables are tender and full of flavour and ready to be frozen and portioned out,” said Robinson.
On Air Dining has its own fleet of branded vehicles delivering the food from its 3,500ft2 kitchen in the Diamond Hangar at Stansted, to airports all over England and Wales. It is packaged to make it easy to cook in steam ovens, microwaves, or conventional ovens. From there, the food is eaten mainly on flights to the Middle East, Europe, Russia and the US.
The menus have a classical French bent, but clients can choose what they want. All food is prepared in a way that conforms to the science of cooking at altitude. “It’s known that food loses 50% of its taste because of dehydration and air pressure affecting your taste buds and sinuses. So we use more salt and exploit the umami factor,” said Robinson.
Having established itself as the main British caterer for the super-rich, On Air Dining has expansion plans. “We’ve grown a phenomenal amount quickly and we now want to establish a network around the world. It depends how the model is taken up, but one option is to partner local providers and to make sure they serve the high-quality food that is hard to find in most places.”
