Virgin Atlantic

We always pick Virgin over BA because of its excellent in-flight entertainment. Too bad we can't say the same about its food. I was glad that I brought some Rich Tea biscuits or else we would have starved to death.

On our Shanghai - London flight:

After the take off our meal arrived 2 hours (not including the 45min-delay) and half a packet of Rich Tea biscuits later. I was desperate. Still I was not prepared for the crap we were about to get. My beef with rice (how typical) was swimming in some dark salty sauce. Pass. And I was not able to identify the starter, so pass once again. The bread roll was stone cold. Pass. Kit Kat - made in China! Sorry we have standards here. Pass. The pudding was some kind of sponge and cold souffle type thing. Total waste of calorie quota. Pass. I managed to savage some plain rice (good god) and then there was cheese but the crackers totally sucked. Spring onion flavoured?? It's not like people don't smell bad enough already after an 11 hour journey. Pass! Back to the biscuits.

And here's the other delightful choice for lunch: (you guessed it) chicken with veg. We had to cut through the cube of solid mass in order to confirm that it was indeed chicken. The chicken looked and tasted like there was some kind of rehydration process involved in the cooking.

We indulged in the entertainment instead. My picks were Extras season 2 (why only 3 episodes?), The Simpsons, Family Guy, Only Fools and Horses. No time for any of the movies! Dang.

I was staving once again half way through our flight. I went searching at the service area and I saw some Galaxy bars! As I reached and grabbed one I got stopped by the stewardess. Galaxy bars were for crew only. Customers could only have crappy muffins and sandwiches. WTF. I wolfed down some kind of chicken mayo sandwich and a muffin and while cursing continuously.

At last the second meal was served. Seafood or pork. We went for pork and was surprised to see that it was actually "char siu" - Chinese BBQ pork. Apart from being too fatty it didn't taste too bad. The game of submerging and hiding the fat bits we picked out from the pork into the pudding goo was good fun at least.

As for our London to Shanghai flight, things improved slightly. For lunch we had a pasta salad with pesto (edible), and choices of meatballs, Sichuan chicken and vegetarian something rather. We went for the meatballs and surprisingly they actually tasted like meat! The sauce was way too salty though and the roll was cold. The cheese and crackers were nice though.

I once again came prepared with tea biscuits and this time we even got sandwiches and crisps. Npt a lot of time for food cos we got all the shows and movies to watch. There were 2 more episodes of Extras, and I thought I would try Peep Show - it was alright. Then I thought I might as well watch That Mitchell and Webb Look. Had a few laughs (loved the bit with Numberwang). Then I moved to the movies and I realised Blades of Glory was on the list. I think I kept everyone awake laughing out loud so much.

We were served breakfast (forgot pictures) before the landing but let me assure you that it was nothing special. All in all the flights were not bad. In fact there was too little time to watch all the good stuff. Just bring your own food.