Extra Feature: ANA In-Flight Meals

In spring 2013 I took a vacation to Japan in which I had splurged on traveling with ANA for the first time. I have been on many flights and had my share of poking forlornly at in-flight meals, but what I had this time shocked me - in a good way!

On ANA flights, meals are actually preceded by a snack. From the looks of the package it looked like a standard mix of salty peanuts and pretzels, but to my surprise it was actually a tasty mix of nuts, soft sweet pretzels, and a sweet rice cracker mix.

ANA's dinner choice option 1, which was obviously the more "western" choice. The main dish was some kind of beef and mushroom with rice, which was not bad. The side dish was some sort of crab salad with chicken strips and a caprese (!) salad. I usually shy away from seafood and cheese on airplanes like the plague but it was shockingly fresh and good.

My travel companion FT had the curry rice (good!), and a side dish of cold soba with hijiki (the black seaweed you see there). 

The next meal "lunch" was a chicken pasta dish... also shockingly tasty! It looks like some creamy fettuccine but is actually a more Asian style chicken and gravy sauce.

And on my next ANA flight, the in flight meal was crab rice which, to my shock, had chunks of real crab along with various mushrooms, lotus root, and egg. 

I took some subsequent domestic flights from another airline that had the standard mushy food and unpalatable cold cuts - blegh. However, a next flight on ANA again helped reassure me about airplane food. A stewed beef dish paired with some cold cuts, pickles, and a small amount of noodles. 

On my returning flight, dinner was a donburi meal. 

And the very last "lunch" (and I'll figure out how to rotate this photo... eventually...) before returning home was an oden meal with stewed fishcakes and veggies. There was also fruit that had an apple rabbit, peach, and kiwi. 

Best of all, after all meals, you also get a little haagen-daaz individual portion ice cream.

I had balked a little on the price I had paid for flying with ANA, but was so pleasantly surprised by the experience, especially the food! It was probably the first time I actually looked forward to the meals while flying and helped make my long haul flights seem so short. I hope that this brings good tidings to weary travelers that yes - good meals in the sky do exist.