In the photo, the tray table meal was supposed to be first class, but the traveler who received it called it a “bowl of sadness.”
Shiny layers of meat, squares of cheese and a bruised whole tomato are visible in the X post that has more than 15 million views since it was posted Jan. 4.
The robust response included commenters sharing photos of their own sad airline meals. A few compared the food to the famously paltry offerings at Fyre Festival. Many suggested flying private or a BYO meal approach.
For a select few, it was an opportunity to do a little bragging.
And this is just the starter course on our recent @emirates business flight
pic.twitter.com/C5vfTZ5Tgz
— Adelle Nazarian (@AdelleNaz) January 4, 2026
“Caviar service is always on point” on Lufthansa, one person wrote. Turkish, Emirates, KLM, Qatar and Singapore Airlines all got shout-outs with photos of multiple courses and beautiful spreads Aside from a Delta Shake Shack burger here and there, the praise was almost entirely heaped on airlines based outside the United States.
Proving that airline food doesn’t always have to be the butt of a joke — or bane of a flight — travel experts shared some of the most memorable meals they’ve had in the air.
Bibimbap on Korean Air
Rani Cheema, a former culinary travel specialist who now focuses on creative retreats, loves the bibimbap — a mix of rice, beef and vegetables — in economy class on Korean Air.
“There was a flight where I ate bibimbap for dinner and woke up and ate it for breakfast,” she said in an email.
The dish comes with a tube of gochujang, which Cheema said she couldn’t eat because of an allergy. But friends asked her to collect the condiment for them because the version the airline used was so good.
She said that she upgraded herself to business class on Korean Air, but doesn’t even remember that meal. She still remembers how amazed she was at the bibimbap.
“Must have been one of the most surprising meals on a flight I’ve ever had,” she said.
Vegetable soups on Virgin Atlantic
It was a chilly day last March when Madison Blancaflor, managing editor at the Points Guy, boarded her Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York City. The smooth winter vegetable soup in what Virgin calls its upper class cabin, served with chive oil and vegetable crisps, made an impression.
“I wasn’t expecting bad food,” she said. “But I wasn’t expecting to be talking about it coming up on 10 months later. I would pay Virgin Atlantic if they would give me the recipe to the soup so I could make it at home.”
Blancaflor said she also had a delicious potato and leek soup in the Virgin Atlantic lounge before leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport on the first leg of her trip.
“I think I’m just comfortable naming Virgin Atlantic the soup queen of the skies,” she said.
Christmas Eve chicken on Air France
Travel adviser Kathi Evans of Best Travels to Paradise knew she was in for a treat on her Air France flight when she and her family were greeted with champagne.
“You kind of have an indication that things are going to go well,” said Evans, who took a Christmas Eve flight in business class with her husband, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter in 2024.
Dinner was chicken, scalloped potatoes and carrots. For her 2-year-old granddaughter, the carrots had been cut into the shape of small flowers.
“I’ve had chicken on planes before. And it’s either dry or chewy or parts of it are cold or whatever,” Evans said. “This was perfect. The little sauce that they put on top of it was delicious, the potatoes were delicious, the carrots were delicious.”
Your reminder to order “Asian Vegetarian” to get Indian food on flights This @united meal is better than any North Indian restaurant in San Francisco. The paneer dish is clever- paneer separate from gravies so you get paneer makhani and saag paneer & it doesn’t get mushy pic.twitter.com/oQZR6xfkgQ
— Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) December 25, 2025
Ethiopian spread on Ethiopian Airlines
Michelle Baran, a deputy editor at Afar who has written about plane meals, generally does not eat on domestic flights. For international flights, however, she is at the carriers’ mercy.
During a long-haul flight in business class on Ethiopian Airlines several years ago, she said her meal — a full spread of Ethiopian food with injera — was a “total out-of-the-blue surprise.”
“You point to all the different things that you want from the trolley and they put together a proper Ethiopian plate like you would expect at a restaurant,” she said.
She doesn’t even remember exactly what she picked from the “rotating roster of saucy things.”
“I know it was just tasty,” Baran said.
Uni on Japan Airlines
Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, described the main meal on his 2019 first-class flight on Japan Airlines as “laughably extravagant.”
He said the meal on the Tokyo-to-Chicago flight was between five and 13 courses, depending how you counted, and included “a parade of different dishes” such as cold bites, soup, seafood, beef and dessert. There was eel in yuzu sauce, egg custard with caviar on top, a prawn dumpling in seafood broth.
One dish included uni, the edible bits of a sea urchin, which Potter called “nearly on par with some of the best uni I’ve ever had in Tokyo.”
“I do still very vividly remember that meal because it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can get this in a metal tube at 35,000 feet?” he said. “How is that possible?”
Sashimi on All Nippon Airways
Freelance travel reporter Chris Dong said Japanese carriers Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways have served his favorite in-flight meals.
One standout during a first-class flight on ANA a few years ago was the sashimi as part of a multicourse meal: “a dedicated raw fish course, which was insane.”
It was followed by an entrée of “super tender” beef, Japanese rice and pickles. “It was delightful,” he said.
In economy, he remembers an “amazing” version of the Malaysian dish nasi lemak — coconut rice with sambal, chicken, hard-boiled egg, fried anchovies and peanuts — that he preordered on the budget carrier AirAsia.
Caviar service and lobster on Qatar Airways
Charmaine Lamsin, a physician from Washington state and frequent traveler, said she loves the caviar service in first class on Qatar Airways, part of the appetizer course. She has had it twice, in 2024 and 2025.
“It includes the accoutrements with blinis, diced red onion, eggs and chives and sour cream and lemon,” she said in an email. She said more courses follow, so she’s never hungry. Actually, she gets “so full I can’t eat most of it.”
She said she will also get lobster when she sees it on the menu. She loves seafood, but said most airlines offer dry salmon or bland shrimp.
The post The best meals you can get on a flight, according to travel pros appeared first on Washington Post.
