Magic carpet ride

In the previous post, we shared the “Arabian nights” – dinner services on Turkish Airlines. This time, we take a magic carpet ride and chomp through the breakfast and lunch.

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For those who have not read the last post, I introduced the chef in the sky. One of the feature of the TR meal service is chefs that are on board to prepare the meals in the kitchenettes. This allows one to have sunny-side up eggs in the sky. No there’s no open flame stoves on board, but induction cooking can be wonderful too.

Breakfast Service

This was from IST to MAD, the traditional Turkish breakfast specialties. Besides the freshly squeezed orange juice (which I skipped because of the sugar level in those) and fresh fruit salad, the tray came with comb honey from Erzincan, “kaymak” clotted cream from Afyon, and a walnut tomato spread. The cold colds included regional cheeses (aged cheese from Kars and “erzine” from Çanakkale), marinated Turkish olives (which are harder than usual olives, much like Teochew olives), and black sesame cottage cheese salad.

Simit is a sesame crusted, circular bread, also known as Turkish bagel. It can be chewy but the chewiness varies with region. This one tasted just like a bagel and went very well with the clotted cream and tomato paste.

If you think that’s it, there’s more. “Gözleme” grilled flat pastry stuffed with cheese and spinach with tomato and grilled green pepper was the main filler for the breakfast.

In another flight (SIN-IST), the breakfast was equally elaborate. The first tray included plain yoghurt, grilled chicken breast and roast beef with olives and grilled pepper, fresh fruit salad, selection of cheese and oven fresh bread, croissant and danish.

If you think the first tray was good enough, then came the piece de resistance – “sunny side up” fried eggs. Fried eggs anywhere else would be a non-event. But high up in the sky, this was culinary feat.

Lunch Service

In a flight from BCN to IST, I managed to try their lunch service. The first plate was Turkish mezze (cold starters) that included labneh, grilled eggplant, hummus with paprika and dolma (stuffed grape vine leaf).

On the same tray was a selection of cheese, garden fresh salad with olive oil dressing, mango panna cotta.

And when you were almost full, the main entree came. I selected grilled Turkish style meatball, bulgur pilav (cracked durum wheat rice in tomato), sautéed zucchini and roasted red pepper. The meatballs were more like two hamburger patties, well spiced and grilled nicely. The pilav was soft and moist, and full of the tomato stock flavour. I finished the whole entree.

I am very impressed with TR, since I flew them so often in Economy, and now in business class, it was even better than SQ in terms of the food. And then there’s the Turkish Airlines Lounge in IST airport. That is for another post on its own.

Flights taken Jun 2018.