QF43 SYD-DPS yesterday. All in all a good flight - food fairly good (by QF standards) but meal service felt slow, and now that I'm typing this up and checking timestamps on photos - definitely was. On boarding we had menus at our seats and were offered a PDB.
We then had a minor departure delay due to 'inconsistent pax loadings' so meal orders were taken prior to departure, seemingly in status order as the crew went from my partner and I in row 2 to someone in row 4/5, then back to row 1. Poor guy in front of me asks for two mains and gets swiftly shut down. We pushed back 30 minutes late, at 5:15pm.
T+45m: Drinks service
T+1h15m: Starter service
Zucchini and basil soup with parmesan croute - I don't often pick the soup but this sounded good. It was quite hearty and went well with a little dollop of the Pepe Saya butter served with the 'bakery'. Would definitely order again.
Salad of herbed lemon chicken with chickpeas, balsamic onions, broccolini and saffron aioli - a large portion for a starter and certainly better than most Neil Perry salads. Chicken wasn't dry thankfully, and the dish tasted quite nice, although the saffron aioli tasted suspiciously similar to hollandaise sauce. Neil could have called this dish 'Chicken Benedict' and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.
T+1h55m: Mains service
Sandwich of slow cooked chipotle lamb with sweet onions, mint salsa and salted chilli - very, very tasty with a decent chilli kick. I would've usually gone for the barramundi main, but I'd just had a serving of barra in the SYD F lounge so decided to switch it up. Didn't regret it, but it was difficult not to drop bits of the lamb (luckily I've honed these skills over many years of sloppy kebabs at 3am .. cue big night eh/double shots comments)
Beef fillet with Paris mash, green beans and salsa verde - Steak on a plane. You already know how this ends, and so did I, but my partner just couldn't resist ordering it. The meat was dry and beyond the capabilities of David Caon's picnic cutlery. The saving grace was the rather oily salsa verde (you can see the puddle in the top right corner) which helped rehydrate the steak slightly.
T+2h30m: Dessert service
Vanilla creme caramel - Delicious, as a dessert should be. More surprisingly a very large portion - served in a soup entree bowl. Not complaining.
T+3h: Dessert plates cleared.
At this point we were almost halfway through the flight. I wasn't intentionally tracking time but through watching a 4 x 1 hour episode docu-series (
Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, highly recommended if anyone is vaguely interested in hip hop!) I was conscious of each hour that passed.
T+5h10m: Pre arrival snack served.
Sweet potato roll with tomato relish - fairly good. Sweet potato was mixed with lots of spices, presumably to mask the fact it is sweet potato. If you closed your eyes you could nearly imagine this was a samosa rather than a vegetarian-friendly sausage roll.
Thai style fish cakes with pickled cucumber and chilli dressing - Run of the mill reheatable fish cakes. Nothing special but still edible. Between this and the sweet potato roll, I'd probably go the roll.
This is the first time I've flown A330 J to DPS and it is so much more enjoyable than on the 737. I'm definitely repositioning for this run again in future.
