Qantas upgrades food in cabins and lounges
Qantas is beefing up its culinary offerings in both its lounges and cabins to deliver a world-class dining experience no matter your elevation.
Qantas’s first-class lounge at Sydney Airport is many things to its guests. For some, it’s simply a place of transit, a place to unwind with a glass of fizz between destinations. Others view it as a makeshift office, somewhere to dash off a few emails before jetting off. But increasingly, according to chef Alex Woolley, the lounge is where you go for a restaurant-standard meal before slipping on an eye-mask for a long-haul flight. “We want to give people a really luxurious experience on the ground, so they have the choice to sleep through their flight if they prefer,” he says. Considering the lounge is open from 5am to late every day, with up to a thousand people dropping by, that requires fairly meticulous planning. “We’re Sydney’s busiest restaurant,” he adds.
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It’s also one of the most enduring. The Qantas lounge and the airline’s in-flight menus have been under the creative aegis of Neil Perry and his dedicated team for 26 years. In that time, the Rockpool Consulting group has designed thousands of dishes – enough to fill a mini-library of cookbooks. Many airlines partner with bold-face chefs, adding their imprimatur to a menu or dish, but the Perry-Qantas alliance remains unique in the aviation world. Preparing vinaigrettes to order, individual salad service and freshly scrambled eggs are some of its innovations in cabin service. “What we do is very different,” Perry tells me. “My team and I write every menu. We select all the wines and non-alcoholic beverages and we’re very active in the training space.”
On a recent morning, Travel +Luxury was invited to observe one such training session. Like leading-edge restaurants, the four lounges (Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and Los Angeles) update their menus each season, and today marks the introduction of the latest Perry-approved carte. Among the autumnal dishes is an eight-hour braised beef brisket, enriched with tarragon and shallot butter, steamed blue-eye cod with shiso vinaigrette and pickled daikon, and one of the airline’s plant-based options, a salad of peas and witloof on a marshmallow-soft cloud of whipped macadamia purée. In the dessert options, a rich apple cake with a scoop of vanilla-yoghurt sorbet is certain to be a crowd-pleaser.
At least 10 chefs work at a highly choreographed rate in the lounge’s fast-paced, open-plan kitchen. One cook is furiously wok-frying eggplant, another arranges bok choy on a plate like an artist. Others are tossing salads or scooping ice-cream. “We have one person whose sole job it is to make Neil’s signature chicken club sandwich and salt-and-pepper squid,” says Woolley. Both dishes are stalwarts of the menu: 350,000 serves of squid are plated up in the four lounges each year. Another ever-popular dish is the deconstructed pavlova, with fruit that changes according to the season.
Still, the menu updates are constant. Perry sends Woolley notes about dishes that he’s tried during his travels, or that might have piqued his interest in a cookbook. “Maybe he’s had an amazing taco somewhere or a great seafood experience in Japan – that might be a starting point.” Then, of course, there are Perry’s restaurants – past and present – that continue to inform all the Qantas menus. “A lot of dishes from Spice Temple, Rockpool and Rosetta have found their way onto menus,” Perry says. Once a dish takes shape, Perry, Woolley and the team taste and tweak further, working alongside the airline’s commercial kitchens and catering companies worldwide until everyone is satisfied. Menus are also adjusted depending on routes. “A dish that flies out of Shanghai is not necessarily one you’d send to Johannesburg,” Woolley says. “There’s a lot of balancing. It’s like a big game of Tetris.”
Then there’s the fact that what works on the ground may not work in the air and vice versa. Those crisp, fried items, like the Korean fried chicken introduced to mark the airline’s direct flights between Sydney and Seoul, could seldom be served in the air, due to the lack of deep fryers. The famous Perry steak sandwich with tomato and chilli relish, meanwhile, is exclusive to the first cabin, where it’s still the most requested item, with more than 30,000 served each year.
Asked whether the team needs to adjust in-flight dishes to counter the supposed “tastebud numbing” that occurs at high altitude, Woolley smiles knowingly. “Neil always says, and I heartily agree, if something tastes good on the ground it will taste good in the air. Great flavours are always going to be great flavours.” One difference is that the cabin atmosphere is drier. “But all that means is that you notice if your food doesn’t have enough sauce. So we really focus on moisture and juice, to make sure nothing tastes dry.”
To keep on top of his game, Perry occasionally flies with competitors for a stickybeak. And when he flies with Qantas, he always calls into the galley for a chat with the cabin team to find out what’s working and what isn’t, and find out what customers have liked or disliked, so he can make adjustments. “I want them to know that I take their feedback seriously,” he says.
That feedback – from crew and customers alike – has inspired Qantas to make its largest investment in its dining offering across all classes in more than a decade. To experience highlights from the new first-class cabin menu, I move to a plush sofa in the lounge alongside one of the eye-catching room dividers designed by Marc Newson to have a nifty aerodynamic look. First up is a crab and pork salad with green mango, cashews and nahm jim dressing. I can taste the Perry-ness: his passion for pan-Asian references and peak produce, his flair for instilling rich flavour. I know this dish well. In fact, I’d eaten a version at Perry’s Double Bay restaurant Margaret just days before, the biggest difference being the original uses blue swimmer crab while the Qantas adaptation features spanner crab. Otherwise it was largely identical, right down to its chewy-crunchy cubes of seasoned pork, soft folds of crab and each strand of mango seemingly arranged by hand.
I also try the new seared Glacier 51 toothfish served with a sun-bright saffron sauce, zesty fennel and steamed potatoes. There’s a lighter version, too, served with zucchini ribbons and Cobram Estate olive oil. “Choice is luxury,” says Woolley. The exquisitely flavoured fish, with tiny green olives and aniseed punch from the fennel, is one I’d be happy to be served on land or at 10,000 metres. I also try a golden crumbed Margra lamb cutlet, and am told about the extra-generous servings of Italian Calvisius caviar on blini offered as an appetiser. Both international and domestic travellers have had their menus overhauled of late, with bigger portions and better produce the consistent theme.
As I finish chatting with Woolley, two lounge guests approach our table. “That apple cake,” declares one. “It wasn’t even a cake, it was more like a mille-feuille, or a cloud! Please pass my compliments to the chef.” I gesture to Woolley and say that’s the man they want and they repeat their comments.“That’s what we’re trying to do here,” he tells me later. “We want to make delicious comfort food people can relate to.”
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