Vickie Lives Life and Overeats
Restaurant Reviews
The fruit platter wasn’t available on my Sunday afternoon Sydney-to-Brisbane flight QF536 (flying for work, too, so that’s depressing), but for dinner on the Sydney-to-Brisbane QF563 flight back Monday night it was! The 1.5-hour flight was delayed.
The fruit platter had: 1 strawberry, half a kiwi, 4 slices orange, 4 slices pink grapefruit (a first in fruit platter for me!), 2 halves passionfruit and a banana. And of course soy milk. No apple this time, though.
It was a late overnight flight and the second leg of our journey home from a wonderful but exhausting ski trip at the Sahoro Ski Resort (that’s a lot of context in one sentence), and I’d already brushed my teeth and totally determined to just sleep when we got on our flight. The QF26 Tokyo-to-Sydney flight turned out to be super empty.
This empty:
We didn’t embark early; the plane took off like that!
We were told we could make use of any space and sleep horizontally if we wanted despite in economy class. We were also handed this flight menu:
Oh sushi… It’s pretty late and I’d already brushed my teeth. Do I or do I not? Yes. Yes I shall!
And that was the right decision! The meal came with a great fresh sushi selection and a panna cotta for dessert. My only complaint is instead of the traditional raw salmon nigiri, they used smoked salmon; and that’s hardly a complaint.
Next morning, I informed Richard, who decided to skip dinner and went straight to sleep, of the awesome sushi I had and showed him the photo. He regretted it.
Breakfast time!
The wrap wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but when I asked for a banana, the flight attendant gave me 2! Win! This has literally been the best flight in economy class. (I’m pretty easy to win over with food.)
There was a slight delay because a woman died at the terminal just before our flight, so after a long while, they decided to drop us off at the freight terminal instead. Minor inconvenience.
Was getting a sushi meal worth it on a Qantas flight? YES!
In unprecedented vickie.life history, for the first time ever, Vickie did NOT order the fruit platter special meal on a Qantas flight! How was that possible? Well, I took the bait and ordered the non-online-exclusive salmon option on Q-Eat (get it? Bait? Fish? No?) for our QF25 Sydney to Tokyo international flight.
Q-Eat said: Salmon fillet with sesame soy sauce, green beans and rice: Salmon fillet gently cooked, dressed with a flavoursome Asian inspired sauce and served on a bed of fragrant rice with green beans.
On the flight, it was… a very disappointment meal. The salmon was overcooked.
I should have known and had some of that pumpkin on pumpkin action instead.
Richard pre-ordered the online-exclusive Barramundi with lemon dill sauce and roasted winter vegetables. It’s much better than the salmon.
Breakfast was Spinach and feta toastie, plus a Greek yoghurt with apple cinnamon granola.
The flight menu:
Evening flight from Melbourne back to Sydney, QF466, after a whole day of inter-state work. The flight was later than I’d hoped– Deja vu…
The fruit platter looks familiar. Deja vu…
But we got a Lindt Lindor chocolate ball this time. I wasn’t given a chance to reject it, so here’s a pic.
In the morning, I’d also taken the flight QF411 from Sydney to Melbourne, and also ordered the fruit platter. I’d neglected to take a picture of the content because I didn’t eat it straight away, but I’m 90% sure it’s the standard apple, banana and soy milk. Anyway, here’s the box…
Yep. It’s a box.
Qantas 747-400 QF128, Hong Kong to Sydney international flight.
I ordered the fruit platter, as usual.
There’s a big tray of fruits for dinner and a small tray of fruits for dessert; I suppose I did order a fruit meal. But! Can I point out the small REAL MILK sitting in the tray? REAL MILK! NOT SOY MILK!
For breakfast, there’s another fruit platter (one tray). This time it came with a sugary yoghurt, more REAL MILK, and a punctured orange juice that leaked everywhere and made everything sticky.
Not a super fun experience when I barely slept in the shorter 8-hour flight.
I didn’t keep notes so I have no idea what Richard ordered. Funny how little you can tell what’s in a flight meal from the photo, huh.
Breakfast looked pretty good.
A muesli bar before we got off the flight.
Qantas has a new Q-Eat programme available for pre-selection for international flights departing from Australia. I wasn’t quite curious enough, but Richard took up the online exclusive offer when I pointed out to him that there’s duck! On a flight! Economy class! This was available on our 9-ish-hour QF117 international flight from Sydney to Hong Kong.
Lunch order: Duck a l’Orange brussel sprouts and creamy mash potatoes (online exclusive) – “Classic French dish in which duck breast is roasted and served with orange sauce, consisting of herbs, vegetables, orange zest and juice. The duck is then accompanied with brussel sprouts and creamy mash potatoes.”
That description. So fancy.
It arrived like this:
So it sounded a little fancier than it looked…
Over here, I stuck to my very safe, reliable and/or boring fruit platter. (Mostly boring.)
“Later in the flight” snack for all: Weis ice cream bar (as usual).
“Prior to arrival” meal is a Beef, spinach and cheese gozleme.
The flight menu:
Evening flight from Melbourne back to Sydney, QF466, after a whole day of inter-state work. The flight was later than I’d hoped and it was pretty empty at the back of the plane.
Not the freshest fruit platter I’ve had. I was also pretty exhausted at that point, having been up since 04:30 on the day.
Not even the 70% dark mint chocolate could keep me up.