This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. A Few Airlines Remain Finicky About Food January 21, 2003 By JOE SHARKEY SIX miles above the frozen Great Plains, at about 1 p.m. on Sunday, I began to admire the Braided Pretzels as I fetched them hungrily one at a time from their half-ounce foil packet. I mean really admire them in their buttery, crunchy, salty magnificence. This was on a Northwest Airlines flight, on the second leg of a trip to Phoenix with connections in Detroit and Minneapolis. Since I got up at 6 a.m. to rush to the airport, I hadn't had anything to eat but the wonderful half-ounce bag of pretzels. Obviously, delirium was setting in. Backwards reeled the mind. Could it have been only a few days earlier that I was standing appraisingly at a long white-clothed banquet table tastefully arranged with china-dish displays of the fanciest airline food: chilled malossol caviar, medallions of marinated lobster, beef filet mignon with buttered carrots, herb-crusted Chilean sea bass, roasted lamb in tapenade jus? That lavish repast - for inspection, not wholesale consumption - was set out in a utilitarian dining room beside the bustling kitchens of the Flying Food Group, which prepares meals for Singapore Airlines at a plant in the congested industrial service district bordering the marshes beside Kennedy International Airport in New York. In surveys of business-traveler preferences, Singapore usually ranks at or near the top in assessments of its food on international flights. Not for nothing, then, is Singapore emphasizing its commitment to in-flight dining, at a time when many domestic airlines have eliminated or sharply curtailed food service or, in a growing trend, have started having their flight attendants actually peddle packaged meals off a cart in the aisle. In a white lab coat, Hermann Freidanck, Singapore's manager of food and beverage services, was moving deliberately from dish to dish, inspecting the caterer's presentation of various menu items being planned for Singapore's spring schedule of flights between New York and Frankfurt. He rolled his eyes in disdain at the idea of selling sandwiches off a cart. Decent food, Mr. Freidanck swore, ought to be carefully maintained as a component of air travel, especially on long flights, which is where airlines are engaged in their most intense competition for business passengers who pay the highest fares. "There is not much difference in price between a bad roll and a good roll," he said. "In my opinion, food is still one of the main ways to differentiate between airlines that otherwise all get you from Point A to Point B. Food remains one of the major potential sources of customer dissatisfaction, too. No one complains about the brand of fuel you're using, but with food, everybody's got an opinion." Let's stipulate here, by the way, that haute cuisine in the air comes at a price, and it is both unfair and pointless to condemn domestic airlines - which are losing money with every plane they send up, with fares that are on average the lowest they've been in a generation - for not serving meals the way they did in the good old days. Last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City set an apropos tone to this topic when he told business and cultural leaders that New York isn't a cheap ticket but rather a luxury product that delivers quality at a price. But all of the publicity in the last year about domestic airlines' deteriorating food service, even in first- and business-class cabins, has opened up marketing opportunities for competitors. So a good number of foreign airlines - Japan Air Lines, British Air, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Swiss Air, Air Jamaica and others are examples besides Singapore - have lately been overtly stressing that idea in their pitches for the higher end of the international business travel market emanating from the United States. Singapore, which has increased its overall capacity by about 15 percent in the last two months as growth in Asian destinations lifts a small rebound in international travel, is determined to hold the line on food, Mr. Freidanck insisted as he critically inspected and tasted dozens of dishes for first-, business- and economy- class menu dishes while the caterer's chefs and production chiefs scribbled notes on clipboards. "We are now actually spending more on food than we did before 9/11," Mr. Freidanck said. Singapore food executives make these inspections and menu selections quarterly at airline caterers around the world. "Once Hermann passes on the dish, we take a picture of it so that our production crews and ultimately the onboard flight attendants will see exactly how it's supposed to look," said Bob Y. Sun, vice president for sales at Flying Food. Mr. Freidanck worked his way along the tables, dipping a spoon into some broth and stopping to scowl at the way some food was arranged on a plate. Flying Food chefs scurried back into the kitchen to fix the presentation to the inspector's liking. The whole process typically takes four hours or more before all of the dishes are evaluated. No one eats anything until the inspection is done. David Burke, the executive chef at the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group and a consultant for Singapore who devises the menus worldwide, confided that he was feeling a little peckish as he surreptitiously swiped a chocolate bon-bon off a dessert plate. "Hey, I once flew about 20 hours straight for a meeting in Singapore," Mr. Burke said. "After a certain point, all you have to look forward to is food." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/21/business/21ROAD.html?ex=1044158742&ei=1&en=aa52439a37c59147 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company