11 Feb 2017

Eating onboard China Airlines [On the plane]

Flew China Airlines in January and Febraury, and had a chance to try different menus from four different caterers. 

The first meal was an early lunch, with 2 choices of mains.  Seafood noodles or rice with chicken.

The seafood noodles was quite a misnomer, with sweet and sour fish being the only seafood, and with a rather fishy smell at that.  The portion of vegetables was rather generous.  Appetizer was some sliced meat with cucumbers, not very inspiring.  The bun came nice and warm and melted the butter very quickly.

The rice with chicken was not awesomely good, but at least it did not have the fish smell of the mis-named seafood noodles.  Despite being an in-flight meal, seasoning was used rather sparingly, so the meal was neither too salty nor sweet.  Kudos to Caterer No.1 for being health conscious.


A very early dinner was served with sauteed pork with rice or 三宝饭.

Again the mains were easy on the palate, but it was quite obvious that the previous meal and this were prepared by different caterers, because the amount of meat and vegetables and rice were totally different.  Caterer No.1 believed in less carbohydrates and more greens and was generous with protein while Caterer No.2 decided that passengers should eat more rice, less meat, and vegetables are just an afternoon.

Appetizer was a slice of rather pale ham with cucumbers, and there was no cake this time.  Instead there was a taiwanese treat of date cake wrapped in edible rice paper.


This was 三宝饭, but I counted only sliced duck and sausages.  Perhaps that little stalk of vegetable counted as a 宝 too.  I wished the Caterer had been more generous with the duck because it was tasty and unusual to have duck in a economy class meal.


Caterer No.3 was Japanese, so the cooking was more Japanese, in terms of the dessert - tea mousse and soft sweet roll.  Mains were seafood pasta and rice with chicken.

This seafood pasta was a real seafood pasta, with prawns, squid rings and many small scallops bathed in tomato pesto on penne which surprise surprise was still al denta for me despite being a reheated meal.  I previously had penne on another carrier which was soft and too soggy for my liking.

Appetizer was small cubes of ham with 春雨, a 和风 appetizer.  The tea mousse was not very good, and I could not taste if it was red tea or black tea.


The rice was chicken was not as good as the seafood pasta, especially the rice, which somehow did not even have the right moisture consistency as those combini bentos.


Caterer No.4 was not as good with pasta compared to Caterer No.3, but did a better job with the rice.

Mains were a choice of chicken pasta and spiced fish rice.

The mains seem a litte smaller in portion compared to the previous three meals and appetizer was the same sliced ham as Caterer No.2 had provided.

Caterer No.4 was also not so into vegetables, because why did pumpkin had to be cubed into such small cubes?!

Dessert was interesting a biscuit-like thing with black sesame seeds with some frosting such that it resembled a picture of 阿里山.

Perhaps next time I should ask the stewardesses where these interesting desserts can be bought.



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