One of the thing that everyone gets curious about when traveling via plane is, what kind of food are they serving on the plane? Well, at least I do. I wrote about the food on plane of All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) in 2015 (you can read about it here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/food-on-plane-ana-jal/ ). It was time for me travel again, on JAL. So, here is what they served on their aircraft this time. This is again on a Premium Economy, so the menu selection is better than the regular economy.
The first thing we get is a nice hot towel to clean our hands before we eat. The flight attendant came around with a tray of hot towels and hand them out to everyone. Love getting hot towels before my meal…
I started off with Champagne. Why not celebrate the beginning of our vacation with my own little bottle of Volleraux Brut Réserve? I This champagne is offered in Premium Economy Class only. They still have good selection of complimentary drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. They have wine, beer, whiskey, juice, soda, tea, coffee, etc., etc…
My husband went with Japanese Shochu, which is also offered in Premium Economy Class only. Yes we like “exclusive” anything… LOL.
Speaking of exclusive, the plastic cup is made exclusive for JAL. To prove it, there is “JAL” design on the bottom of the cup. I like these little touches for some reason.
We received rice cracker as a snack. At our last trip, they gave us this rice cracker plus dry natto… Maybe they are trying to cut cost? Either way, we were not so hungry so that was OK. The Premium Economy Class ticket comes with free access to airport lounges, so we had our breakfast at Air France Lounge who is a partner of JAL (you can read about it here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/air-france-lounge-jfk/) before we boarded.
It is lunch time when we head out from NYC to Tokyo. So, the first food on plane we had was a lunch. There was a choice between tendon (tempura donburi) or chicken, and we got one of each so that we can try them both. The Assorted Tempura on Steamed Rice came with lots of side dishes. I also asked for miso soup, which came in a paper cup. There was not much ingredients in the soup, but it is still nice to get a side of hot soup with a meal.
The “assorted” tempura was mainly shrimp tempura. There were two rather soft shrimp tempura on the top. Since they can’t be eaten right when it is fried, so I know this might be the best that they can do up here in the air… The fact that they were covered in sweet tangy sauce didn’t help keep its crispy texture either. The sauce was also over the steamed rice, a bit too much sauce in my opinion, but it was good, strong flavor. It also came with bell peppers and carrots, but they were mostly rice in the container.
Then there was a thinly-sliced sweet potato and thinly-sliced burdock “tempura.” They were more liked fried chips than tempura or anything else. I liked these better than the shrimp tempura, since they were nice and crispy.
The sides included super fresh, crisp salad with dressing, and very sweet and ripe fruits. I am not a fan of sour fruits, so I was happy that they were all nice and sweet. Very juicy too.
Then some smoked chicken and potato salad. There were two smoked chicken slices, and they were a-ok. Nothing special. The meat was soft but didn’t really have much flavor. Since it was a cold dish, it almost tasted like a slice of ham. The potato salad was nice.
The last side dish is my favorite out of them all. Japanese noodles “Soba” with fried bean curd. Now, it isn’t the best soba in any kind of way, but I somehow love getting soba on the plane. I wish if the portion was much bigger! The noodles were still nice and al dente, as they are kept separate from the sauce until you pour it in.
The other food on plane option, Sriracha Mushroom Chicken with Steamed Rice came with the same side dishes.
It had lots of ingredients, such as carrots, green beans, and bell peppers. It had really nice kick to it. Great sriracha flavor, nice spicy dish. Spicier than we thought it would be, but since we really like spicy food, it was nice.
The chickens were small pieces, easy to eat. They were cooked throughout, it was not so juicy, but since they were coated in the tangy and spicy sauce, it didn’t really bother me.
After the lunch, it was time for dessert! We each received a small cup of Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream. I love Häagen-Dazs… The spoon is inside the top lid. They are a bit too frozen, as usual. Just give it a few minutes, unless the plastic spoon will not be able to dig in there.
After the meal, we wanted to wash it all down with a nice hot drink. The flight attendants started to come around with hot green tea, hot tea, and hot coffee. We got hot green tea first. Nothing like a hot cup of green tea to end the Japanese meal…
After that, we also got a cup of coffee with milk. We we planning to watch lots of in-flight movies, so we had to keep us awake somehow. Coffee is a good place to start.
Several hours later, it was time for a little snack. We got Tomato Juice and Perrier Sparkling Mineral Water. We hard these drinks are good to have on a plane, to help keep our body healthy until we get to our destination.
The snack was sandwich combo. They came wrapped, and kind of small. But these are just “snacks” so they are not supposed to be large.
One was ham sandwich. It had three slices of ham, so it felt like having a super thick slice of ham sandwich. The other one was egg salad sandwich. The bread slices were kind of dry… I assume it is not easy to keep anything moist up in the air, where it is super dry. But that made the sandwich to be less tasty…
The midnight snack is my favorite food on plane. It is instant noodle, “Udon de SKY” (play on Japanese words). Since the flight attendant brings them to you filled with the hot water, they go around to see who wants it. So if you are sleeping or not hungry, they won’t be wasting the instant noodle.
After a few minutes of wait, I opened up and had the nice hot udon noodles. Nothing like a late night noodle snack on a plane!
I put some Japanese spice, shichimi togarashi on the top, which comes with the instant noodle. It is made specifically for JAL by Nissin with extra technology. On the plane, they can’t have super hot water due to air pressure. The instant noodle requires really hot water, so they had to make the noodles in a special way. The JAL instant noodles are made so that they cook with low temperature water, and also, it takes longer to cook. This gives the flight attendants more time to distribute them to passengers. Awesome to have such extra care so that we as passengers can enjoy them.
Two hours before we land, we get our last meal. It is like a breakfast, kind to your stomach kind of meal. Which is really nice. It is Chicken & Mushroom Congee with Parmesan. It comes with Cheese & Cracker, Fresh Fruits and Yogurt.
Chicken & Mushroom Congee with Parmesan was indeed really nice to our tummy. It was actually really flavorful. It is like a porridge, with warm and kind flavor. It had a nice amount of salty-ness to it. I heard we lose lots of liquid and sweat on plane, without realizing it, so it is good to recover some salt back into my system.
Cheese & Cracker was actually pretty good. It was Garden Salsa cheese, so it had tomatoes, onions and a touch of jalapenos in every bite. I really quite liked this cheese! I might need to go get some for home later…
Fresh Fruits were sweet oranges. Another great thing to have before we land. Nothing like fresh dose of vitamins.
So, that was all the food and drinks we had on the way to Tokyo. Now, let me tell you what we had on our back to NYC from Tokyo. Also, on JAL Premium Economy Class. This time, I started with Plum Wine over ice.
My hubby went with Asahi Super Dry Beer. This is the only Japanese beer option that they have. A good, basic, light Japanese beer to start our journey back home.
We received the same rice cracker for snack. The color of the package has been changed from blue to yellow. The content was the same though.
This time we are leaving around dinner time from Tokyo. So, the first meal was dinner options between a shrimp dish or a hamburg steak dish. Again, we ordered one of each so that we can taste them both. The Stir-fried Shrimp in Mild Chili Sauce with Steam Jade Rice came with lots of side dishes as expected. We got miso soup on the side in a paper cup too.
The Stir-fried Shrimp in Mild Chili Sauce with Steam Jade Rice was nice. Good amount of rice and shrimp chili. Since it is “mild” chili, it was not spicy, but had a little sweetness to it.
I liked the jade rice better than the usual white steamed rice. It was flavorful and it went nicely with shrimp chili. They had a good amount of little shrimps in there, nice and plump.
The side dishes include super fresh salad, as usual, with great crispy texture.
Instead of usual fresh fruits, they had Coconut Blanc-Manger & Tropical-inspired Apple Compote. Yes that is a mouthful…and it was pretty good. The blanc-mager was much thicker than the ones that I am used to, which are more velvety. This one had similar texture of soft cheese block, maybe a bit softer. The apple was nice, sweet and soft but yet still a bit crunchy. The blanc-manger and apple compote went well together.
And then there was Octopus Potato Salad, with Bagna Càuda Sauce. Say what? Hakuna Matata sauce? No, it is Bagna Càuda, an Italian dish made of garlic, anchovies, olive oil, and butter. Did JAL suddenly got super fancy? My goodness, coconut blanc-manger and octopus potato salad? Yes please! It actually had nice octopus pieces in it, and the potato salad was quite tasty. These are all made by winner chefs of food competition, so they are extra fancy.
The last side dish was Cold Steamed Chicken with Special Spicy Flavor. Unlike the cold steamed chicken on the way from NYC to Tokyo (sliced), this chicken was shredded. It was ok, not so spicy but tasty. The chicken was soft and I moist.
The other option, Hamburg Steak with Original Bell Peppers Ketchup and Fettuccine in Cream Sauce looked ok. Came with all the same sides, the only difference is the main dish.
It had a nice, big hamburg steak with special sauce, and a good amount of Fettuccine pasta. It looked very filling.
The hamburg steak was quite good, juicy and meaty. The special sauce was tangy and sweet, went nicely with the hamburg steak. The pasta was a-ok, nothing really special. The cream sauce was nice, but felt a bit dried in some spots, since the pasta was not completely coated with the sauce. It was a nice dish though, and yes, it was filling.
Then the dessert time. We received Häagen-Dazs Rich Milk Ice Cream this time. It was very similar to vanilla… It again came pretty frozen, so we had to give it a few minutes to get thawed a bit before we could start eating it. It was nice and milky, creamy and velvety once we were able to put our plastic spoon into it.
And that was the end of the dinner. We watched some in-flight movies and what not, and then we both kind of past out… We didn’t even wake up for our midnight snack, “Udon de SKY” instant noodle. But we were tired, and we were pretty full too, so we didn’t really need that extra food in our tummy.
The last food on plane which is served two hours before we land was something fun. I remember the last JAL flight from 2015 was something fun and creative also, an AIRMOS Burger. This time, it is AIR YOSHINOYA. Just like the AIRMOS Burger, AIR YOSHINOYA came with description and instruction on how to assemble the food.
It came with a few side dishes and a paper box. They really like to make you work for food…and we love working on our food too! LOL. I am a fan of Yoshinoya Beef Bowl, so I was pretty excited to try their JAL version in the air. How fun is this, really!
It came with three packets on the side: Japanese chili powder seasoning, pickled ginger and egg sauce. When I opened the paper box, I found a plastic container in the inside. The paper box was nice and hot, and the inside was even hotter, but not burning hot.
When I removed the plastic container, I found steamed rice on the bottom. Inside the plastic container was beef topping. It is nice that they are kept separate, so that you can enjoy “fresh” beef donburi. Also, if you wanted to have the beef and rice separately, you could just have them the way it is. For those who wanted beef bowl, there are several other steps required…
I wanted my own beef bowl, of course. Well, in this case, it is more like Beef “Box” than a bowl. Anyways, I poured the beef topping with sauce all over on the rice. Looking good…
Then added Japanese chili powder seasoning, pickled ginger and egg sauce on top. Looking even better… And it smelled pretty good too.
And my own Air YOSHINOYA Beef Box is done! I was ready to dig in… And it was pretty tasty! The beef and onion had soaked up the flavor of the sweet sauce, ginger added a little kick to it, and the egg sauce completed the dish. It was packed with flavor, the beef was soft and tender, onion was cooked just right with a little crunch still left, and it was all so satisfying!
The side dishes indicated coleslaw salad, but it was more like mashed potato with corns. It was really good, creamy and tasty. Very fresh.
Dessert was Orange Jelly, nothing special but a good way to finish the very flavorful meal. It was like a pallet cleanser at the end.
So, here are all the food on plane that we consumed on JAL Premium Economy flights. I say they were pretty good, we enjoyed them better than some other airline’s food on plane. It is cool that we get to try out food that are designed by creative chefs. It is really interesting how they have to figure out the best way to serve something as simple as an instant noodle in the best condition in the air. I appreciate all the hard works everyone has put in so that we can enjoy our food on plane!
JAL – Summer 2017 to/from NYC to Tokyo