This week’s Meal of the Week takes us back to 2011 and a hot lunch I enjoyed on Ryanair.
It was a crisp, spring day and my brother and I had booked an incredibly cheap fare from Frankfurt Hahn (FHN) to Pisa (PIS).
Reaching the airport required a fairly long bus ride from Frankfurt. By the time we boarded, I had worked up an appetite.
Onboard, FAs were hawking everything from food to perfume to lottery scratchers to e-cigarettes.
As an aside, Ryanair is the only true smoking flight I’ve ever been on. While my China Eastern flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai may have been magnitudes worse, smoking was “unofficial” there. On this flight, FAs were actively selling vaping equipment and encouraging passengers to smoke onboard (“feel free to smoke onboard with these smokeless cigarettes…”). This policy, by the way, has now changed and vaping is banned.
I noticed beef chili was on the menu for 9EUR. It looked hearty and I was hungry, so I ordered it (with low expectations). It arrived in a box.
And certainly did not look appetizing:
But it turned out to be very tasty: an excellent early lunch. The beef (maybe it was horse…the product was made in the UK) was spiced nicely and there were some potatoes in the mix. The only thing missing was cheese.
Eating chili with beans may not ever be a wise move on an airplane, but I figured the flight was only 90 minutes and I could deal…well, rather my brother sitting next to me…could deal with any consequences.
If you ever see beef chili on the menu again on Ryanair, give it a try.
Fortunately they’ve toned down the hawking over the years. Sure, they still push refreshments, duty free and scratch cards, but the volume of selling is now on par with most legacies (just swap scratchers for airline credit cards).
Their hot meals, while certainly not gourmet, are actually pretty decent. I had the chicken tikka masala last week and liked it – it was reasonably hearty and tasty. My biggest gripe is the packaging, combined with a complete lack of personal storage. It’s a logistical exercise to unpack, eat the contents and then reassemble the meal box without dropping anything or staining your clothes.
I have to correct you on the “vaping products” sold on-board. They were a smokeless nicotine cigarette, which might sound the same, but in experience is quite different. They didn’t produce any vapor, they were more like nicotine gum that you would receive through the stick, but nothing ever came out the other end as a result.
I noticed a Chicken Tikka Massala on the Ryanair menu just over a week ago. I flew from Murcia to Eindhoven and the flight was delayed; I was hungry.
The curry was in a box aswell, it looked like a typical microwave meal even though the box looked a bit more luxurious. At first I thought I shouldn’t order it, my daughter said the whole plane would smell of curry but I blamed Ryanair for that; they shouldn’t have put it on the menu.
The Chicken Tika Massala turned out to be absolutely delicious!!! I was very happily surprised. I hope Ryanair will keep these microwave meals on their menu for a long time. Washed away with a very bubbly bottle of processo; needless to say I had completely forgotten my delay and had a very comfy and satisfying flight.
Thank you, Ryanair, for changing your menu into something more daring; it definitely works for me
This is not related to food, but wanted to make everyone aware!!!
NOT only food, but they are extremely deceiving on their reservation system and when confronted with the situation in Santorini airport the agent response was Ryanair are tricky like that….
What a reputation on Greece!!