Tasting Menu In Qatar Airways Business Class

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.

I recently reviewed a Qatar Airways 787-9 business class flight, which featured a unique dining concept the airline called a “Tasting Menu.”

Tapas-Style Late Night Tasting Menu In Qatar Airways Business Class

The “stress-free” dinner (as it was described on the menu) included a bite-size tasting menu of six dishes, beautifully presented in a bento-box like display, with items including:

• Hummus with Arabic bread
• Lamb rogan josh pie
• Seafood bisque
• Beef nori with sesame
• Cheese selection with dried fruit and walnuts
• Fruit tart

The hummus hit the spot…it always does. Unfortunately, it was literally only one bite. Rather than using the pita bread, I used the vegetable “sticks” to scoop up the hummus…a low-carb treat.

The seafood bisque was the highlight of the meal, creamy and brimming with seafood including crab, mussels, and even a scallop.

Rogan josh is an aromatic curried meat dish originating from Kashmir. It is made with red meat—traditionally lamb, mutton, or goat—and colored and flavored primarily by alkanet flower and Kashmiri chilies.  This rogan josh pie included lamb meat and was actually not overly spice, but very flavorful.

Beef nori (seaweed) with sesame seeds was also bit-sized.

The cheese course included two small slices, one blue cheese and one Gruyère…both rather pungent. Dried apricots and a single walnut rounded out this course.

Finally, the platter included a fruit tart with pineapple, blueberries, and strawberries.

Each item, with the exception of the soup, was no more than a couple of bites. But I thought the tapas menu worked really well and gave me a well-rounded light but filling meal before I drifted off to sleep.

CONCLUSION

I’ve flown with Qatar Airways quite a bit and I do not believe that the in-flight catering is necessarily best out of its Doha hub. That said, I really appreciated this particular late-night tapas-style tasting menu and think it provides a great blueprint for how other airlines can cater redeye flights.