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By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
The dish is Filet of Beef with Tarragon Mustard
Sauce, Macadamia Nut Pilaf and Seasonal Squash -- designed
for Hawaiian Air's first-class passengers by Philippe Padovani
of Padovani's Bistro and Wine Bar.

Chicken? Or beef?

Or perhaps you'd like the
Braised Veal with
Chervil Sauce?

Airline kitchens aim high with
the help of big-name chefs

How a recipe becomes an airline meal.

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

THIRTY-THOUSAND FEET over the Pacific, flight attendants were tossing heaping quantities of salad into the trash. Passengers just weren't eating their veggies.

So, here's a plan: Why not get rid of the salads and improve the size and quality of the entree?

Made sense.

Tried it.

Oops.

"You would've thought I had taken off their seat belts! Oh my God ... They noticed there was no salad and the customers' first reaction was, 'The airline's trying to give us a cheaper meal!'

"So I immediately turned around and put the salads back on."

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
In the tight confines of the airplane galley, Lorna Uchima consults
a photograph so she can plate a dish according
to the chef's specifications.

Thus began Beverly Gannon's adventure with food service in the sky.

Gannon, chef and co-owner of Hali'imaile General Store and Joe's Bar and Grill and an experienced caterer, found airline food to be a brave new world when she began consulting with Hawaiian Airlines seven years ago.

It's a world into which more and more chefs are venturing. Since 1993, several of the original Hawaii Regional Cuisine chefs have lent their expertise to Hawaiian. Next month, a new group, the Hawaiian Island Chefs, begin their rotation through the first-class cabin. Gannon, meanwhile, has signed on as the airline's corporate chef (and the salad in coach is now a more popular Tossed Green Salad with Champagne Mustard Vinaigrette).

Three of Hawaii's chef superstars are also designing dishes to be served above the clouds: Roy Yamaguchi has more than two years with Continental, Sam Choy has almost as much time with United and Alan Wong joins Aloha Airlines once service to Oakland, Calif., begins in mid-February.

All this, and no money changes hands. The chefs do it for the exposure and the potential to draw customers from among the thousands of passengers flown into Hawaii every day. The airlines do it for the star power it brings them and for the distinctive touch of Hawaii it gives their meal service.

It's a marketing match made in heaven, but fraught with a few perils.

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Hawaiian's first class, left, and coach menus.

It's one thing to craft the perfect dish in your own kitchen, where you can taste everything and put the final touches on each plate. It's another thing to give your recipe to a catering service that will duplicate it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times in a day and deliver it chilled -- or in the case of coach, frozen.

We're talking massive numbers of meals, here. Hawaiian serves more than 3,000 a day on its 14 West Coast flights. Choy says he once watched in a Chicago packing house as 150,000 of his United hibachi chicken meals went "from raw to cooked to frozen to packed to wrapped to casebound into the trucks" -- all in an hour.

"My goal is having the food be the best possible food you can have -- on an airline," Gannon says. "Whether that food can ever be on a level of a great restaurant ... probably not."

Still, food has improved some from the days of "would you like the chicken or the beef?"

Noe Kauhane, manager of product development and inflight services for Hawaiian, was a flight attendant for years, serving up a mediocre cycle of food. "We had this lasagna and this chicken cordon bleu. The same things were going around and around for years," Kauhane says.

"Before we started this, I must say our food was not that great. The catering kitchens tried to do Hawaiian-flavored food and they had no idea what that meant."

Nowadays, well, there's still chicken and beef, but it's Filet of Beef with Tarragon Mustard Sauce. That's in Hawaiian first class. Back in coach there's Maple-Glazed Chicken with Oven-Roasted Potatoes ("I got four letters from people who had flown in coach, upgraded to first class and still took the chicken with the maple sauce," Gannon says).

And beyond that are choices such as seared sea bass, misoyaki butterfish, lamb marinated in hoisin sauce, chicken breast with a mango cream sauce -- all served or to-be-served on Hawaiian.

Good-bye chicken cordon bleu.

sss

What are the critics saying? In an informal poll, several recent Hawaiian and United passengers gave good marks to the first-class food, but when it came to coach, comments ranged from "above average" to "nothing special." No one said it was awful, though, and about half did notice that a "name" chef was involved.

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Uchima says two flight attendants will typically
plate 35 meals in seven minutes.

Choy has received a lot of the commentary first-hand. United passengers approach him at the airport, call his restaurants, come up to him at public appearances -- to let him know what they think of his inflight food. "I was at a cooking demo where a lady came up to me and said, 'Your food sucks on United, Sam.' "

With each complaint, he takes down the flight number and has United trace the meal. "We gotta be adults and understand that when people are not happy we have to look into it."

Sometimes there's a service problem that can be fixed. "Usually it's more of a mental thing," he says. "They expected the lush garnishes of a restaurant meal."

Overall, Choy rates as invaluable his experience with the airline that also books the services of Jacques Pepin, Charlie Trotter and the Food Networks' "Two Hot Tamales."

The association, Choy says, has brought many new customers into his restaurants. United also gives him mileage credits and helps sponsor his charitable events. "There's no money value you can put on it."

sss

The airlines are reluctant to say how much they spend on each passenger's meal, but they acknowledge they must control costs.

Extravagances are possible, though, with some trade-offs: A modest salad inbound so that more expensive Nalo Farms micro-greens can be served outbound. And so forth.

"I've been known to rob Peter to pay Paul," Gannon says. "I might say, 'If we give a passenger a little less lettuce, can we give them a bigger brownie?' "

The most important lesson for chefs preparing to fly, both Gannon and Choy say, is to let go. Accept that they cannot control these meals as they can the food in their restaurants. Trust that the main idea will get across and that passengers may well come to their restaurants for the real deal.

The new chefs coming to Hawaiian next month -- Chai Chaowasaree of Chai's Island Bistro, Hiroshi Fukui of L'Uraku, James McDonald of Maui's Pacific 'O -- do so with some trepidation, but also a realization of what they stand to gain. They will be featured in Hawaiian's inflight magazine and in a video shown to all passengers.

"Three-thousand people ride on that plane everyday," Fukui says. "That many people are going to know about you."

Airline realities Airline meals must be cooked, cooled, moved, reheated, then served en masse. In light of this, chefs have learned to accept certain truths: No rare steaks. For food-safety reasons, meat must be cooked to a temperature that leaves steak close to well done. Pasta absorbs sauce when it's reheated. So dishes must be over-sauced or they dry out. Fish can be temperamental. Drier fish won't survive the process (cooked to a certain temperature, "it's like opening a can of tuna," Sam Choy says). Oilier fish such as sea bass, salmon, butterfish and opakapaka do well, especially if crusted with a coating that keeps it from drying out. Vegetables can be temperamental. Sugar snap peas and shiitakes are sturdy enough to survive container packing, but softer items "just go to squash," Choy says. He oven-roasts combinations of veggies and puts some in raw so they cook during reheating. But leafy island favorites such as bok choy "just can't go." And then there's bread. Toasted items such as croutons don't do well. And rolls end up stale when they're placed on pre-made trays that are chilled. Beverly Gannon says if she could have anything, it would be an answer to that problem. "You want a soft roll; you can't get it out of a refrigerator." Comfort foods from coach Passenger favorites on Hawaiian Airlines: Spaghetti and meatballs Meatloaf with barbecue sauce Chicken with maple glazes

---

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Working in the galley below deck on a Hawaiian Air plane, Alan
Zheng loads a tray of foil-packed meals into an oven. Once heated,
the trays are placed in portable meal carts, which are
sent "upstairs" in a tiny elevator.

From recipe to meal cart

Star-Bulletin

It all begins with a recipe, selected by a chef from among restaurant specialties, or designed specifically for airplane use.

Then the work begins.

First, the selection process. Several meals are prepared in test kitchens and served to airline and catering staff who judge them not only on taste, but how well they will survive the production process. This part may take six months or longer.

Meals that make the cut are modified to make them easier to produce by the hundreds; ingredients may be adjusted to meet cost limits. Some sauces or dressings may be purchased from the chef's restaurant, pre-made.

Leighton Miyakawa, executive chef with Dobbs International Services, which caters meals for several airlines, offered this rundown on what happens next. Miyakawa is charged with translating Sam Choy's recipes into thousands of meal trays for United Airlines' international and mainland flights out of Hawaii.

Entrees, vegetables, starches and sauces are prepared in the Dobbs kitchens, then individually packed. For first class, each component goes into a foil packet or souffle cup and chilled to below 40 degrees. For coach, everything is sealed on a single plate and frozen. Meals are packed 24 hours ahead, except fresh items like salads, made 12 hours ahead.

The food is packed on trays which are loaded onto carts designed to fit particular airplanes. Coach meals are allowed to partially defrost -- "slushy, actually," Miyakawa says.

They are heated up on board (not microwaved), and then the carts are pushed down the aisles.

A final thought: Taste buds are dulled by high altitude, Miyakawa says.

"We tend to make the food a little bit saltier, because they can't taste as much. You gotta pretty much well-season the sauces."

Chicken is always popular with local passengers, flight attendants say. Beverly Gannon, corporate chef for Hawaiian Airlines, provided this recipe for a meal that's a favorite of her passengers.

SWEET AND SOUR CHICKEN

4 whole boneless chicken thighs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
20 ounces canned pineapple chunks, drained, juice reserved
1 green pepper, julienned
6 cups cooked rice

Marinade:
8 ounces Russian dressing
1 envelope dry onion soup mix

Sauce:
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 chicken bouillon cube
Juice from canned pineapple, plus water to make 1-1/4 cups
1/4 teaspoon ginger

Dredge chicken in flour and fry in oil until browned on all sides. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Mix marinade ingredients and pour over chicken. Bake chicken at 350 degrees 30 minutes.

Combine sauce ingredients. Bring to a boil; stir until thick.

Place rice in casserole, top with chicken, pineapple and pepper strips. Pour sauce over all. Bake 20 more minutes. Serves 4.

Approximate nutritional information, per serving: 1,240 calories, 60 g total fat, 10 g saturated fat, 90 mg cholesterol, greater than 1,700 mg sodium.*

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