Lounge favourites

We used to offer a three-course lunch in the Concorde Lounge, but nowadays people want something quicker. A classic tikka masala curry with rice is always the first thing to be snapped up, while burgers and Club Sandwiches are also popular.

Classics never change

Over the past 20 years there have been certain dishes that always do well when we put them on board. Prawn salad and smoked salmon, for example. We’ve learnt a lot about people’s tastes over the years – including not introducing new things too soon. When we served quinoa a few years ago, it didn’t do well, but now people love it.

Five star suppliers

We spend a lot of time and money on getting the right ingredients and suppliers. We only use the best: Severn & Wye for fish, Ice Cream Union for desserts. If you go to London’s West End, you’ll see the vans from these same suppliers parked outside the five-star hotels and restaurants. 

Flavour innovators

Many restaurants boost their dishes by adding a lot of salt, but we avoid this in our cooking; it’s not great to have too much sodium when you’re flying. Instead, we bring out the natural flavours in a dish by using ingredients rich in umami. These include tomatoes, olives, anchovies and mushrooms. We also cure our smoked salmon in a special way, to make it more flavoursome in the air.

Mile-high testing

Airline menus used to copy hotel menus, but this is no longer the case – we need to innovate in order to develop, prepare and cook food for the air. For every dish we’ll consider the reheating timings, the viscosity of liquids, and the overall moisture of a dish. Nobody wants dried out pasta, lumpy gravy, or soggy salad. We do most of our food testing in aircraft ovens on the ground, but we go up in the air to test anything out of the ordinary, such as new sauces or complicated dishes.

The soufflé challenge

The most ambitious thing we’ve ever introduced onboard is a twice-baked cheese soufflé. There was a lot of trial and error before we worked out the correct oven temperature (it has to be hotter for less time than we thought). Scallops and poached eggs are also quite hard to get right. The trick is to cook them lightly then blast-chill before loading them onboard. They’re then reheated on the plane, but you still have to be gentle.

Local inspiration

Flying out of Heathrow, we have 40 different regionalised menus. To develop these we speak to regional chefs from all over the world (including Japan, China, Korea and India), who then give cooking lessons to the rest of our teams. There’s a limit to what we can do – we don’t serve Japanese-style sushi onboard, for example – but we have created Asian-inspired dressings and fusion dishes.

Flying burgers

Inspired by the trend for American-style food vans, we introduced burgers in First last year. The pulled pork burger was very popular, so we've developed a better recipe. We're also developing a Moroccan lamb slider, made with spiced lamb shoulder served in a Persian bread bun.

From 23rd April customers travelling on selected routes in World Traveller will be able to buy one of five alternative meals via ba.com.