United Airlines has added a new rotation to its Chef’s Table menu, the airline’s tie-up with the brand behind the Emmy-winning Netflix series, and the London chef Tomos Parry is on it.
Parry, who runs the Michelin-starred Mountain in Soho and Brat in Shoreditch, has built his reputation on live-fire cooking drawn from his Welsh roots and northern Spain. His dishes for United Polaris business class include roasted pumpkin with rosemary stracciatella and grilled halibut with seaweed sauce, served on flights out of London.
He is in notable company. The 30-dish rotation runs to 11 chefs across ten cities, among them Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles, the two-Michelin-starred David Barzelay of Lazy Bear in San Francisco, and Brazil’s Manu Buffara.
The interesting part is that it appears to be working. United says more than 60,000 customers ordered the first round of Chef’s Table meals, with satisfaction scores nearly 20 points higher than its other pre-ordered food. For an industry where airline catering is usually the punchline, that is a real result.
It also says something about where restaurant brands now reach. A Michelin chef’s name used to stay inside the dining room. Now it travels onto a tray table at 35,000 feet, the same way it ends up on a chain’s limited-time menu or a supermarket range. The name is the product as much as the cooking.
For diners the logic cuts both ways. A plate designed by Tomos Parry and finished in a galley is not a table at Brat. But as a way to carry a kitchen’s identity far beyond its four walls it is a sharper move than it first looks, and a long way from the days when the sharing platter was as adventurous as travel food got.