How your in-flight menu comes to life

At any given day up to 15 million people are in the air heading to destinations scattered around the globe. On all these short- and long-haul flights, passengers must be fed something, whether it’s a paltry bag of pretzels or a three-course meal. The food is brought to their seat, they consume it, but rarely do travellers give a second thought to how it gets onto the plane, where it comes from, or who makes it. Gate Gourmet, a major player in the in-flight catering game, invited The Globe and Mail to take a behind-the-scenes tour of their massive facility a few kilometres from Toronto Pearson International Airport, where 700 employees work in kitchens the size of a Costco store to serve an average 20,000 meals a day. What we found is an operation that runs like a well-oiled machine, able to turn on a dime to deal with last-minute flight cancellations and delays, so that travellers can relax at 35,000 feet with their bellies full.

Yes, you can find a decent meal – and avoid sky high prices – at the airport

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How to feed 750 million passengers

Gate Gourmet’s cavernous YYZ facility is in airport backcountry in Mississauga, and is one of many global outposts. Worldwide, the Switzerland-based company feeds about 750 million passengers a year at more than 200 airports in 60 countries. During the pandemic, food production at this 300,000-square-foot site dropped 20 per cent to 2019 volumes. Business has since rebounded to approximately 75 per cent of prepandemic levels here in Canada. Around every corner you will find teams washing, chopping and dicing the hundreds of pounds of fresh food that is delivered daily, where it is then meticulously plated for cold and hot meals. A “gold” sample of each dish – such as this salmon appetizer – will have been chef approved to ensure it meets a certain taste profile, consistency and quality control.

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Three degrees Celsius is the magic number

Food is a key factor for airlines to get bums into seats. Some airlines, such as Turkish and Austrian Airlines, have in-flight chefs on board for long-haul flights but the practice is rare. Most carriers rely on caterers such as Gate Gourmet and outside chefs to innovate and come up with unique dishes, which each airline then approves. Each in-flight meal has to be timed perfectly in a 24-hour window to match its corresponding flight. All hot meals must be cooked then blast-chilled to 3 degrees Celsius for safety reasons. Gate Gourmet YYZ has separate hot and cold commissary kitchens, as well as a halal and kosher kitchen. (An on-site rabbi comes in daily to make sure the food meets kosher requirements).

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Four hundred pounds of pineapple are processed every day, by hand

The kitchens are open 24 hours, seven days a week and deliveries come in constantly. All fresh fruit and vegetables are put through wash cycles where they are sanitized for three minutes. Employees then manually slice and dice the produce, including 125 pounds of strawberries and 400 pounds of pineapples processed in Toronto every day. All the scraps are then loaded into the “Orca” machine, a large food digester which turns the solid waste into liquid waste. In addition to all food, the catering facility also handles all onboard items including beverage carts, condiments and napkins, in-flight menu cards, pillows, blankets, amenity kits and even pajamas for the first- and business-class passengers.

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Why ketchup is king in the air

Beef, typically, does not fly well. For safety reasons it must be thoroughly cooked, which means it is often too well-done for travellers who prefer their meat on the medium to rare side. Molly Brandt, Gate Gourmet’s executive chef of innovation based in Miami, came up with this meatloaf, seasoned with spicy ketchup glaze, cheesy polenta and wilted garlicky greens as a tasty alternative to overcooked red meat. It is Brandt’s job to come up with dishes “of the moment” – in other words, food that speaks to current culinary trends. However, when creating these recipes from scratch she must also take into account how high altitudes and pressurized cabins affect our ability to taste. In the air, for example, people lose about 20 to 30 per cent of their taste for salt. An ingredient like ketchup – which hits all five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami – is a natural go-to as a flavour enhancer, as well as a great alternative to salt, which dehydrates people.

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What do you do when lettuce goes limp at 35,000 feet?

To get an idea of the types of dishes Brandt creates for the airlines, Gate Gourmet held a tasting recently and presented five options, including the aforementioned meatloaf, a golden beet tartare appetizer, duck rillettes, heirloom cauliflower steak and a Nova Scotian lobster cobb salad dip (pictured here). All these plates, designed to showcase the latest culinary trends, are destined for first- and business-class passengers. She repeats this process at least four times a year. The menus are then presented to the airlines, who choose their favourites. Once selected, it typically takes about three months for these plated meals to be served to passengers. Tweaking is generally required to ensure the dishes are doable (for the kitchen crews) and that they travel well. One thing Brandt has learned, for example, is lettuce goes limp at 35,000 feet. Hence, this cobb salad has no wilted greens (Belgian endive, however, stands up well).

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Duck Rillettes or a Lobster Cobb?

Travellers’ palates are becoming more sophisticated, and airlines are trying to think outside the box of what traditional airline food has been. The shift toward plant-based eating, for instance, has made it imperative that Brandt and her team offer a wide range of meal options for different dietary preferences. Brandt has made it her personal mission to never offer pasta, for instance, as the veggie option. “That’s the easy fallback and not very imaginative,” she says. For inspiration, she pores over cookbooks, visits restaurants and studies different cultures. She also looks to match a meal with its flight path. For instance, if an airline is headed to Paris, then the duck rillettes with ratatouille pickles, brioche and fine herbes aioli is a perfect fit. The lobster cobb, on the other hand, primes the taste buds for a stay on the East Coast. Brandt is on a mission to raise the bar on the quality of airline food so that passengers – in any class of service – have a meal to enjoy, rather than endure. “What we’re doing is essentially creating a leftover, but one that tastes amazing reheated and looks delicious on the plate. I’m making food that I’d like to eat.”

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Going above and beyond a beige menu

Brandt joined Gate Gourmet two years ago with no previous experience in the airline industry. That was planned. The Swiss company didn’t want anyone who had pre-existing ideas of what airline food should be. She compares her role to that of a fashion designer who studies trends, listens to clients, and develops ideas that can eventually be mass produced. “If I were a fashion designer, I’d look at the season and then develop a capsule collection. Then I would send my prototypes off to the design team, which is ready-to-wear,” says Brandt, who has almost 30 years of experience in the food and beverage industry. Most airlines switch out their meals every three months, which means she is constantly going back to the drawing board. “The biggest challenge I face is almost my personal mission,” she adds. “There is a real or imagined perception that the food we need to serve on airlines – in general – must cater right down the middle which can lead to what I refer to as a ‘beige’ menu. I want to push the boundaries and produce food interpretations of some fan-favourites as well as introduce them to new dishes that are bold in colour and in flavour.”