Cuisine aboard Singapore Airlines hits new heights

Celebrity chefs and a troupe of wine-tasting muscatteers are the secret ingredients in Singapore Airlines' plan to win over gourmands. DITA DE BONI reports.

What does your average suit-wearing, business-meeting attending, cellphone-hugging business or first-class traveller want from his or her airline?

They've got their big seats, unlimited magazines and films and they've separated themselves from the riff-raff at the back of the plane.

All that remains is for airline food and wine to have the same five-star quality it has back on terra firma, and you've got the ultimate in airborne extravagance.

Airlines are increasingly throwing their financial weight behind the culinary experience they provide - especially to the premium-class passengers - because they know that as prices become more competitive, food is an area where airline brands can achieve distinction.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) is one of those brands going all out to net the gastronome. The typically polite but business-minded management of the airline have gone as far as hiring perversely cantankerous celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to consult on menus; they somewhat unconvincingly describe him as "nice once you get to know him".

Celebrity consultants aside, the operation of providing food for all Singapore Airlines' flights - as well as up to 40 other airlines that fly through Singapore - is mind-bendingly complex.

Every day 38,000 meals are created at the airline's kitchen facility, which are two gigantic warehouses covering 112,000 sq m. The SATS Catering facility, as it is known, boasts a fully automated storage system that can retrieve ingredients stored in warehouses that are four storeys high.

Around 175 flights with multiple meals are catered for each day, the bulk of those lunch and dinner. The airline kitchens employ 2841. The staff observe 800 different menu types, including Halal, kosher, diabetic and lactose-free varieties, all absorbed into the daily routine in the same way Singapore folds many ethnic groups into its steamy national batter.

Everything other than raw materials is created at this facility, including sausages, chocolates and bread. Happily for this corner of the world, Australasia is the source of 20 per cent of the airline's raw food requirements, especially beef and lamb for the numerous curries, Singapore beef noodles and noisette of lambs consumed.

Like the island nation it belongs to, the sprawling kitchens are slightly chaotic as well as spotlessly clean. There are separate kitchens for all categories of food, including Indian, Japanese and Muslim. Journalists invited to view the production are shown through room after room of Chinese grandmothers who spend their working lives cutting carrots into different shapes. There are tomato cutters, cheese graters, chili de-seeders and numerous chicken roasters, because for all the automation, the kitchen's managers are not convinced a machine can do the same job as a pair of hands.

Presiding over this vast, mostly Mandarin-speaking hubbub is ex-Air New Zealand chef and ex-pat Kiwi John Sloane, who at six foot something towers over both his staff and his airline taskmasters.

Executive chef Sloane says the main problem with airline catering is atmospheric conditions which can affect the food and the traveller's enjoyment of it.

"At 10,000 metres, the effects of cabin pressure are substantial. For example, water boils at 85 deg C and so it's hard to get really hot coffee. Wine tastes different, bread goes hard and the tongue dries. You must have saliva so salt, sugar and sourness will be absorbed by the tongue, and a dry tongue doesn't do that as well."

"We put a lot of effort into making sure the food tastes the same on the ground as it does up there."

While the airline is keen to point out that all passengers are important, it is not shy to admit the first- and business-class passengers are the paying gold. First-class dishes offered include baked barramundi (Asian sea bass) fillet in banana leaf created by star Sydney chef Dietmar Sawyere, pan-fried veal loin with truffled mash potato, lobster wonton noodles and fried egg noodles with abalone.

Another element of the premium-class services the airline is trying to foster is flexibility. First-class and some business-class passengers can order meals in advance of their flight from a special menu ("Book the Cook") and be served the meal when they want it. Such requests must be made 24 hours before flying.

Airline brass are keen to impress on their clientele that for the food to be appreciated, the wine must be up to scratch. But wine is another element of the meal that can be adversely affected by the cabin atmosphere, says one of SIA's chief winetasters, Steven Spurrier from London. Twice each year, Spurrier joins Australian Master of Wine Michael Hill-Smith and US wine industry personality Anthony Dias Blue in Singapore to blind taste wines from around the world - a job he admits is not the most onerous.

SIA spends $20 million-$25 million on around 200,000 cases of wine each year. Around $10 million of that is spent on Champagne (including Krug and Dom Perignon) which is offered throughout the plane.

With the wine, "We have to put our palates 'up there'," says Spurrier, pointing heavenwards. "Low humidity makes the wine taste more acidic. It's the worst possible conditions in which to drink wine."

The tasters choose wines that are not quite at their ripest, wines that could do with six to nine months of maturation to cover a delay before consumption. They aren't fully apprised of every detail of the ever-changing menus, so they choose wines that can complement many dishes, which is why the wine list tends toward French and Italian Burgundy and Bordeaux varieties in the main, although some Australian and New Zealand styles, including 1999 Selaks Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and Mara Estate 1998 Merlot, make it on the list.

The exuberant winetasters speak highly of New Zealand vino, but say they often can't get the quantities they need to fulfil the airline's contracts, which are ordered five years in advance. They'd especially like a good Kiwi pinot noir, they say between sipping and spitting.

On the Australasian routes, more "New World Wine" is offered. The "kangaroo route", as the trip to Australia is also known, boasts one other distinction - the highest per capita consumption of alcohol of any the airline offers - which makes the visiting Australian journalist glow with pride, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, a gentle "you beaut" escaping from parched lips.

The three wine-tasting muscat-teers are licensed to add to the SIA winelist, and investigate possibilities continually. They did, for example, look at Argentinian wine before deciding Chilean wine offered similar quality at a lower price.

At biannual tastings they sip 150 wines a day for almost a week, after which they "argue the toss" on each bottle, gradually whittling the choice down to five favourites.

Then they report to the airline and "argue the toss" again, this time with price in mind.

While taste and transferability to the skies is important, the trio also consider label when the chips are down - of course, business- and first-class travellers are looking for the top quaff.

Despite the multimillion bottles of wine consumed on flights each year, senior manager commercial supplies Steven Soh says most customers are well behaved. He says passengers are encouraged to drink water in between their alcoholic forays, not only to avoid becoming drunk but to help avert economy-class syndrome.

Overall, like the food, the logistics involved in sourcing, buying in, cellaring and transporting the wine are "horrific", says Soh. But with Singapore Airlines aiming to become one of the big five airlines in the world, it has had to focus on a raft of home comforts (as well as some not quite so homely, like the popular Singapore girl).

But wine and food are an ever-increasing focus, SIA maintains. As one of the staff says matter-of-factly as we depart, "to murder an ancient phrase, the way to a top-class traveller's wallet is through his stomach."