American Airlines Is Improving Transpacific Premium Cabin Meals

a tray of food and a glass of water

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It’s clearly the time of year for airlines to rethink their menus. We’ve already seen United make changes to its domestic buy onboard offering and Delta announcing improvements to its international Main Cabin menus and now American Airlines has announced that it’s revamping its premium cabin menus on transpacific routes.

American Airlines is introducing the “creations from two new chefs” to its flights from Tokyo as well as on its flights from Auckland and Sydney.

American’s Premium Cabin Meals from Auckland & Sydney

American has chosen celebrity chef Sean Connolly to reinvigorate its premium cabin menus from Auckland and Sydney.

a man in a black chef coatImage – American Airlines

Here are the dishes flyers can expect to see going forward:

Small Plate

  • Queensland prawns served with Sean Connolly’s Bloody Mary cocktail sauce

Salad

  • Baby Cos lettuce with microgreens with a choice of champagne vinaigrette or organic sherry vinegar

Main Plates

  • Beef short rib with red wine jus, smoked mashed potato, carrots & oyster mushrooms
  • Moroccan chicken with chickpea casserole, roasted cauliflower & raita
  • Herb-crusted blue-eyed cod with tomato lentil ragoût & charred lemon half
  • Potato gnocchi with wild mushroom cheese sauce

Dessert

  • Creme caramel with rum-soaked raisins

I always find pasta/gnocchi dishes too heavy for my liking when they’re served by airlines…but there are a number of other items here that I’d happily try. Fish is always a hit-and-miss affair at 30,000+ feet (but I’d still try it) while its hard to truly screw up short-ribs or Moroccan chicken so those should be just fine.

I can’t say that the salad sounds all that inspiring (although I guess a lot will depend on what will be included in “microgreens” and on how fresh the dish actually is) but creme caramel for desert sounds like it has potential.

American’s Premium Cabin Meals From Tokyo

American has enlisted chef Jun Kurogi to introduce a new premium cabin Japanese meal on its flights from Tokyo Haneda and Narita.

a trays of food and a glass of wineImage – American Airlines

Kurogi is already a chef for American’s transpacific joint venture partner JAL so this is clearly a move to help American closer align its offering to what the superior airline of the two offers (a good move for flyers).

[HT: View From The Wing for details of the menu items]

Other Update

American Airlines currently uses menu items from chef Maneet Chauhan on a number of its routes to Europe and South America and the airline is now expanding that’s chef’s influence to include its flights from China to the US.

a woman smiling in a circle

I’ve recently flown in American Airlines Business Class between the US and Europe so here’s a menu that Chauhan helped put together:

a menu of a restaurant

The food was very average and not exactly innovative (short-ribs make another appearance here) but at least the vegetarian option wasn’t yet another pasta dish (full review of the flight and food will be published soon).

Bottom Line

Overall it’s always good to see airlines taking steps to keep their menus fresh and up to date with passengers’ tastes but, from what I’ve seen, American’s transpacific passengers get a noticeably better offering than their transatlantic counterparts – a bit of love for those of us heading to Europe wouldn’t go amiss.