Earlier this week I flew to London on United Airlines in Polaris (business) class. I noticed a small but meaningful change in the dining menu.
Each course now has a more detailed description. I appreciate knowing, for example, what kind of bread will be offered, what kind of cheese is on the plate, and what kind of salad dressing is served.
We now see additions to the menu like:
Warmed Mixed Nuts
Salted almonds and whole cashews
Assorted Breads With Butter
A choice of warmed bread rolls, including garlic bread, pretzel rolls, campo rolls, and potato rosemary rolls
(are these now considered separate courses?)
And a much more detailed dessert menu:
Assorted Cheese Plate
Tillamook 3-year aged vintage white extra sharp cheddar cheese, St. Pete’s Select blue cheese, Petit Brie de Chèvre goat cheese, cream crackers and fresh red grapes, offered with Graham’s 2012 Late Bottled Vintage port wine from the region fo Porto, Portugal
Signature Ice Cream Sundae
Creamy vanilla bean gelato served with a choice of toppings including hot fudge, butterscotch Carmel sauce, strawberry sauce, maraschino cherries, mini milk chocolate gems and whipped cream
Sweet Treats
Enjoy a selection of sweet treats from Eli’s Cheesecake, including mini apple pies, cookie butter swirl cheesecake bars and seven layer bars with coconut and pecans
Compare that to the old dessert descriptions:
International Cheese Assortment
Served with grapes, crackers and port
Signature Sundae
Served with a choice of toppings
Sweet Treats
Please as your flight attendant about today’s selection
Here’s the old menu:
And the new menu:
Why It Matters
Some may call this putting lipstick on a pig…or perhaps you can think of a more apt metaphor. Maybe it is just a space-filler.
The food is the same and I know it’s just a small change, but these help guide passengers and avoid receptive and unnecessary questions to flight attendants. Such descriptions also keep United accountable.
Some FAs are too lazy to warm up the mixed nuts. But when the menu calls for “warmed mixed nuts” it makes it more difficult to conveniently forget to warm them up…
Sometimes certain breads (like cinnamon rolls with breakfast) are withheld…I tend to think it more out of laziness than a desire for the FAs to eat them. Now we know we can ask for them.
CONCLUSION
Feel free to scoff that I found this newsworthy, but I like the more detailed descriptions and hope that it at least leads to more consistent warming of mixed nuts…
Excellent. This means the FA’s can focus more on your safety.
Lol
Flew the true Polaris product last week on HKG-EWR and was truly impressed. First time I’d flown UA biz since I was 1K 4 years ago, and the improvement was remarkable. It’s a different airline.
Polaris BLEW AWAY by outbound flight in Cathay business (IAD-HKG) from a soft product perspective. Catering and service were far, far, far superior on UA. Yes, service was superior to CX. As was catering (CX supper service from IAD is an absolute sham). Cabin on the 77W also spiffier. The seat was a push – Polaris much better than their older seats but I had marginally more room in the CX seats (A359).
I’ve been flying CX/AA exclusively to HKG since I left UA years ago, but my experience on Polaris is making me consider hopping back to UA. Oh, and the Polaris lounge EWR was incredible.
Since the catering service is being paid to pre-plate each course,it falls on them to print an accurate menu. It wouldn’t be realistic to expect crew to describe dishes assembled by someone else. What would be the polite way to remind the FA to warm your nuts?:)
I think this is a very positive step. As someone who is allergic to mushrooms I am sick and tired of seeing menus that don’t disclose that the mushrooms are in the sauce or in the preparation. Then when I ask a flight attendant if mushrooms are the dish… Often times they don’t and I end up choosing another entrée that I don’t like. So this is good. It’s also good for people with specific food allergies. On the other side it’s also helpful for the flight attendants are preparing and planning that they know exactly what goes in each dish.
I think this is a very positive step. As someone who is allergic to mushrooms I am sick and tired of seeing menus that don’t disclose that the mushrooms are in the sauce or in the preparation. Then when I ask a flight attendant if mushrooms are the dish… Often times they don’t and I end up choosing another entrée that I don’t like. So this is good. It’s also good for people with specific food allergies. On the other side it’s also helpful for the flight attendants are preparing and planning that they know exactly what goes in each dish.
an earlier commentor said that he was blown away by the united Polaris service and I have to agree. Yes there are some employee issues… But overall the Polaris business class product is way better than what we never experienced before .
Truth in Advertising:
Warmed Mixed Nuts
Salted almonds and whole cashews, heated in a bowl, then left sitting out for an hour to get cold before they’re handed to you by a surly flight attendant who hates dealing with customers.
As pointed out earlier, this is a very important improvement, not so much to make sure FAs warm up the nuts. I am allergic to dairy, I need to know whether butter or cheese or cream is in the sauce. On the other hand, I wonder if it is possible to ask the sauce be set aside now all meals will be pre-plated. I hope UA notice this and let passengers decide whether to pour the sauce.