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.
This week I look back on my first Cathay Pacific business class meal.
My first time flying on Cathay Pacific was in November 2011 from Vancouver to Hong Kong. I had to get to Hong Kong to pick-up a Turkish Airlines ticket to Frankfurt. Yeah, a bit convoluted…you can read more below on the routing.
> Read More: The Long Way Back to Frankfurt (via YVR, HKG, IST)
Back in the day, the ticket cost me only 50,000 BA Avios (now 105,000) and $167 in taxes. It would turn out to be my only flight on a Cathay Pacific 747-400. Cathay retired its Queen of the Skies in 2016.
I love Vancouver airport, by the way. One of the easiest to transit through in Canada.
I drank a lot of orange juice on this flight. A lot of it. It was “the real thing” and recently squeezed. Every picture is a new glass…I certainly got my fill of Vitamin C (and sugar) through the juice. Service began with unsalted almonds.
The appetizer included smoked salmon with a caper. A small green salad with asparagus was included on the side and I chose garlic bread to accompany it.
Not feeling particularly adventurous, I chose pasta for my main course…and loved it. It was just cheese ravioli, but very tasty. I maintain that pasta is always the safe choice when flying in a premium cabin.
For dessert, I enjoyed another cup of orange juice and sliced fruit, followed by apple cheesecake (look at the picture) and hot chocolate.
This proved to be a prefect meal in terms of volume: not too little, but not too much. I promptly fell asleep after dinner, sleeping for the next eight hours.
Prior to landing, a second meal was served. U.S. carriers serve breakfast before landing into Hong Kong, but since the flight arrived at 7:00 PM, Cathay Pacific offered brunch.
Service begin with another mixed fruit plate…and more garlic bread.
For the main course, I chose cod, covered in a dumpling and served with grilled vegetables. It was very tasty.
Chocolate cake with vanilla sauce to finish off the meal:
CONCSLUSION
I really enjoyed this flight and both of my meals. As an aside, the service was also excellent. I have not flown Cathay Pacific longhaul in business class since this flight. I think it’s time for another go.
Do you like Cathay Pacific business class food?
Had great food on the A350 from HKG-CDG this spring. Service also shined on that flight, no quite to the level of the flight before on KE but light years ahead of anything domestic.
Cathay is still good, but there is something a bit off the overall business class experience these days. I still enjoy it though.
I believe that you pay cash for some of your flights, do you write these off as business expenses on your taxes?
I do write off all business travel.
@ Matthew — Do you always or almost always use cash for air and hotel for your business travel? What about your employees? I am curious because I have generally been paying cash for myself for the elite status credit and the tax deduction, but I often use my points and miles for my employees. Given my millions of points/miles, I often wonder if I shouldn’t use more of them for my business travel and forgo the tax deduction. I obviously place an after-tax value on everything when making these decisions,, and I wonder what is your philosophy on this subject?
All the miles I earn I sell to the business. We can chat about the tax implications in person, but it is a great system.
oh this is interesting… will you be writing a post on this? If not, is there a specific place to find more relevant info?
Not going to publish info about this right now, but come to next FTU and we can discuss in-person.
Please don’t! I don’t know when you took this flight, but ever since my last couple of CX flights, I’ve vowed to never fly them again. Have never seen such bad service on a “5 Star” airline in long haul business class. QR has had my business ever since
The quality of the food has declined for a few years. They don’t serve freshly squeezed orange juice on some flights – business class. Sometimes they do run out of mains …. just unbelievable.
The business class fares for CX is higher compare with other airlines.