Each week, my Meal of the Week feature examines an airline meal from my travels over the years. This may be a meal from earlier in the week or it may be a meal served over a decade ago.
British Airways has recently updated its catering in business class. Has the food improved on flights within Europe?
BA recently announced a switch in catering to Do & CO from Heathrow flights. It was my understanding that DO & CO catering would not commence on shorthaul service until 2020, but it appeared on my flights earlier this week. At least I think…
Flight #1 – Afternoon Tea (London to Bilbao, 3:15 P.M. departure)
Afternoon Tea is not going anywhere on British Airways, but it has been refreshed. Gone are the sterile trio of sandwiches on crust-less white bread. My three sandwiches included a round roll with crab meat inside topped with a tiny grape tomato slice, a sandwich with cabbage and ham with mayonnaise on bread, and an open faced swiss cheese sandwich on crusty whole grain bread topped with a fig.
The scones with clotted cream and jam are still available and the tea is unchanged.
The sponge cake included a raspberry crust.
For those who did not want there afternoon tea, a charcuterie board was available. I was seated in row three and would have ordered but it was already gone by the time the FA reached me.
Flight #2 – Dinner (Bilbao to London, 7:40 P.M. departure)
Dinner included a choice of two salads: chicken salad (in a mayonnaise-like sauce) or a vegetarian salad with lentils, shaved zucchini and squash, sundried tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. I went with latter salad, which was very nicely plated.
It was served with a single shrimp in cocktail sauce and a DO & CO branded three-layer cake for dessert. Hot bread was also offered that was very fresh and tasty.
CONCLUSION
I do think the catering has improved on British Airways, at least on shorthaul business class flights. I’m looking forward to seeing how DO & CO does on longhaul flights. I suppose the question remains whether this was in fact meals from DO & CO or just the cake, but the flight was double-catered in London.
Have you experienced the new Do & Co catering on British Airways? What did you think of it?
After the past couple of weeks traveling around in Europe on AF and BA BA’s catering has vastly improved too bad their transatlantic sucks ( F & B ) this trip we found BA better than AF traveling in the Biz version each airline.
BA wins the award for comfort over AF as well
Charcuterie?
Charcuterie Board.
From my experience with TK & OS in the past, it seems like Do&Co rarely renew their catering menu at all. So you would fly an airline 3 years after you first flew them, and still expect to see the same food being catered…I don’t know how “greater” such an expeience would be comparing to the status quo.
The whole meal has been catered by Do&Co. All Club Europe flights ex/to LHR are now served by them.
And the menu will change quaterly now, this has been confirmed by BA based om the feedback of frequent travellers.
All in all, a very positive change!