I am eating what may be the most expensive Japanese meal in the world, no small achievement given that high-end Japanese food is easily some of the most costly out there. This one comes in at around £2,700 a head. Mind you, there are a few freebies thrown in, not least the plane ticket. I am in the upper-class cabin of a Virgin Atlantic flight to Tokyo, and the bento box in front of me is lunch. I'm seriously impressed. There is soft, yielding sesame tofu with walnut in one compartment and in another, a little heap of delicate shimeji mushrooms dressed with sprightly ponzu. There is some tender, savoury sukiyaki-style chicken, a little teriyaki beef with braised mountain vegetables, a bowl of miso soup, steamed rice scattered with black sesame seeds and a dish of tart, crisp Japanese pickles.
It is the best food I have ever eaten in the air, which used to be where ingredients went to die. Then again I am in the pointy end of the plane, along with Take That, who are off on a promotional trip. Obviously up here, with pop stars and plutocrats, rehydrated gunk is not a goer, and increasingly so. Since the mid 1990s when British Airways introduced the first lie-flat beds in first class, the luxury end of the airline business has been forced into a furious competition to modernise their facilities.
Now that almost all first- and business-class services have seats that uncurl into something approaching a horizontal surface, the battlefield has moved. Now it's about all the stuff that's available when you're not lying flat. It's about airport transfers. It's about lounges. And of course it's about dinner, potentially the trickiest arena of the lot. So what are the airlines doing? What would you find if you happened to turn left rather than right as you got on to a transatlantic flight?
For the most part you are likely to find the worryingly familiar face of a TV chef. Singapore Airlines has had Gordon Ramsay on its payroll for a number of years. Air New Zealand has the London-based Kiwi fusion chef Peter Gordon of the Providores restaurant turning out the likes of 'pan-seared halibut on parsley potato mash with nam phrik num dressing and char-grilled asparagus spears'. British Airways meanwhile has, ooh, just about everyone else. Among those on their international culinary council are Michel Roux of the Waterside Inn and Richard Corrigan of Lindsay House, Mark Edwards from Nobu and the Michelin-starred Indian chef Vineet Bhatia.
'The chefs aren't just a marketing tool,' says Derek Reid, a trained chef and now a food innovation executive at BA. 'While it is extremely important to have these people's names on the menus, it's also about product development.'
But in-flight food presents a lot of what the airline people call challenges, and chefs refer to quietly as 'a total pain in the arse'. Michelin-starred chef Shaun Hill, now at the Glasshouse in Worcester, has been working with BA for nearly 15 years and knows all about those challenges.
So what food does he think works best? 'Curry,' he says simply. 'Your taste buds are deadened in the air, plus food dehydrates easily. So highly spiced stews that won't suffer if cooked for longer than normal are the best thing.'
Which is where Vineet Bhatia comes in. Bhatia is the king of the high-class curry. The first Indian chef to win a Michelin star in Britain, he has been working with BA for a few years, and has a clear sense of what will work. One morning he invites me to join him at Alpha Services, near Heathrow, which handles part of the high-end catering for BA. He is to spend two days demonstrating dishes to the company's chefs. 'You can't use cabbage because that would stink out the very small space of the cabin,' he says. 'And scallops and squid just go rubbery.'
So he makes a soup of asparagus, punched up with ginger leaf, curry and spring onion. It is rich, pungent and moreish. He shows the chefs how to make a big-fisted marinade for hunks of paneer - Indian cheese - which will be roasted on the ground then reheated in the air and served with a mango and coconut chutney. 'I'll come back in a few weeks and see how they got on,' Bhatia says. 'Often a dish simply won't work and we won't let it fly.'
One company is tackling the catering question in an altogether different way, by running what is possibly the most exclusive takeaway business in the world. NetJets, the private aviation company, has formed partnerships with some of the most exclusive restaurants and hotels going, who will deliver food to the plane. If you happen to be flying from London you can now request Chinese food in-flight from the Michelin-starred Hakkasan. If the flight is leaving Paris, you can get dishes from the three-Michelin-starred Arpege. And if it's Moscow, you can get serious sushi from Sumosan.
Of course this doesn't come cheap. An eighth share in a Gulfstream jet costs around £3.8m. On top of that a one-way flight from London to New York costs just over £20,000.
And be warned. Dinner is extra.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007
