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.
Have you ever been given a special meal when you did not order one? That happened to me on a Lufthansa flight in economy class…and I didn’t mind one bit.
It was November 2011 and I was traveling from Beirut to Frankfurt. Since business class was simply the same economy class seat with a blocked middle, I opted to remain in economy class. Dinner was served shortly after takeoff.
I was seated in the bulkhead row of economy class and beyond the usual pasta or chicken choices, a FA offered me fish. Now fish in economy class can be quite a bad gamble (I’m thinking about you South African Airways…), but I figured if anyone could pull it off it might be Lufthansa out of Beirut.
When the tray was handed to me, it was clear that I had been given a seafood special meal. Instead of cake there was fruit and instead of green salad there was a tuna fish salad. Also included was a nice baguette along with the fish main course.
The tuna was fairly disgusting, but the main course of white fish topped in pine nuts with dill-infused rice was outstanding.
CONCLUSION
If you are ever offered an extra or unclaimed special meal on Lufthansa, consider taking it. I was quite pleased with my fishy meal from Beirut.
About 20 years ago I was given a kosher meal, while traveling in domestic first class, by mistake. The FA insisted I ordered it. I most definitely had not. There were no other meals available. The other passengers received hot entrees. I had everything wrapped in brittle cellophane plastic with KOSHER stamped on and it was cold. Airplane COLD. Cold meat. Cold white bread. Cold margarine. Cold dry cake. It was all disgusting.
Now maybe today’s Kosher meals offered inflight are gourmet delights…. But I’m not prepared to gamble and find out.