On Air Dining takes off at Stansted
On Air Dining's salad nicoise is a popular starter.
You might think that when you fly in the back of a private jet, you are served only the finest gastronomical delights that money can buy, but the standard catering offered by many aircraft operators rarely consists of anything more than a tray of fresh fruit, a cheese board and perhaps a bottle of champagne.
On Air Dining is hoping to change this. Formerly part of Alison Price and Company, a high-end UK catering group, the rebranded company moved into a state-of-the-art facility at London Stansted’s Diamond Hangar towards the end of 2014, allowing it to better serve the lucrative wide-body aircraft market, along with existing clients such as ExecuJet, GainJet and Tyrolean Jet Services.
On Air Dining’s new menu consists features a number of modern twists on old favourites, including tuna niçoise, daube of beef (taken from the cheek of a cow) and sticky toffee pudding. You can watch Daniel Hulme, CEO, prepare all three dishes in the video below:
https://vimeo.com/111855249
For all of its culinary creations, On Air Dining uses a unique ‘flash card’ system, which provides an easy step-by-step guide for the corporate flight attendant serving its gourmet food on board an aircraft. Hulme says: “You eat with your eyes on an aeroplane, even more so because you lose a lot of your sense of taste. What we’ve tried to do is create dishes that are a little bit fun.”
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An example of this philosophy is On Air Dining’s popular sous vide cod dish, which is served with a rich miso sauce contained in an elegant single-use jug that the passengers pour themselves.
“In a restaurant, the food is cooked, put on a plate and served,” says Hulme. “The challenge for us was keeping-in the quality and the flavours for food that is going to be re-heated and re-plated on board an aircraft.”
Hulme says he is shocked that there is still no legal requirement for people handling food on board a private aircraft to hold a food hygiene certificate.
As part of its commitment to educate the business aviation industry about food safety, the company holds free culinary training days for corporate flight attendants. Hulme is also the vice chairman of the European Corporate Aviation Flight Attendants Committee, which is endorsed by the both the NBAA and the EBAA.
