Brussels Airlines announce new range of Luxemburg-inspired dishes

Brussels Airlines has come up with new meals offerings for its customers flying in business class. The airline recently introduced a wide selection of finest wines, beers, cookies, waffles and pralines from Belgium. The airline took the assistance of Belgian talent and using high quality Belgian products to create the new dishes.

Unveiling its latest in-flight meal offerings for its business class customers, Brussels Airlines said that the new range of meals has been created taking great inspiration from the local dishes of Luxemburg. The airline specially hired the services of Star Chef Julien Lahire presently associated with Le Moulin Hideux restaurant, which has been running since 1962. According to the airline, Chef Julien is endowed with great qualities. He always emphasizes on the best quality and makes it a point to personally interact with the producers of products before he purchases them for creating exclusive meals.

The exotic meals created by Chef Julien are now being served on long haul flights to Africa and the United States emanating out of Brussels. The month of April is special for the travelers as the airline will be serving starters like chicken ballotines with walnuts, which will be complemented with crisp vegetables and iceberg salad. The present range of exclusive meals will be served to the customers until July 2014.

Brussels Airlines will not stop at this alone. When this exclusive meals offering ends in July, the airline will again be hiring a new Michelin starred chef and will seek exclusive meals preparation which will be inspired from the local dishes from Flemish Brabant province. Meanwhile the business class passengers will continue to select from two different menu options or they can select one meal from the 21 different special meals offered to those with diet specific meal requirements.

The airline had served exclusive meals to its travelers in business class since November 2013, which was specially created by Geert Van Hecke, a three time winner Michelin-starred chef. Geert is among the top names in Belgian food scene.

Geert had been running a Bruges restaurant De Karmeliet, which he has owned for more than 30 years now. The meals prepared by Geert included a starter with smoked Damme eel, mashed fennel and tarragon yogurt sauce. This first course was followed by an exotic Bruge-style shrimp dish prepared with steamed snow peas and curried sweet potatoes. The meal was accompanied by cheese and Flemish beer. The passengers traveling to the United States and Africa from Brussels were served this menu.

Brussels Airlines has unveiled “Belgian Star Chefs” initiative under which it will extend invitation to a different celebrity chef after a gap of every 4 to 5 months for renewing the business class menu comprising of gourmet dishes based on regional as well as seasonal ingredients. The invitation to Geert Van Hecke was the first under the “Belgian Star Chefs” initiative.
 
Apart from Brussels Airlines, other carriers such as Air France, Lufthansa and Etihad Airways have been offering in-flight meals to their premium customers prepared by celebrity star chefs.