Air New Zealand this week launched its new Taste of Aotearoa menu in the premium cabins of long-haul flights departing New Zealand, with ambitious new offerings including crayfish, wild venison and snapper.
The airline describes the new food items as contemporary cuisine with a focus on showcasing the country’s finest regional produce and "unique" New Zealand flavours.
"I'm extremely proud of this menu, I think it's what New Zealand cuisine is all about," Justin Koen, head of culinary at Air NZ, told Newshub.
"It's about our regions and the wonderful produce that we have the luxury of working with as chefs. We have incredible produce all around the country, and we believe that if we can get it locally, we should."
Air NZ's 2024 Taste of Aotearoa menu includes:
- Confit potato with onion crème fraîche whip and chives
- Mānuka smoked rye sourdough
- Smoked kahawai rillette with celery, caper, parsley salsa and citrus
- Crayfish bisque with chive crème fraîche and sourdough croutons
- Slow cooked wild Fiordland venison with pancetta, parmesan polenta and balsamic roasted red onions
- Seared New Zealand snapper with escabeche vegetables, smoked mussels, white beans and fresh dill
- Ambrosia ice cream.
Among the items being discontinued in favour of the new menu is an amuse-bouche made with paua.
"Unfortunately, the process behind getting the paua - the supplier can't do it for us anymore. Hopefully we can work with them again in the future and bring it back to life, because that was excellent and we loved using it," said Koen.
While it may not present the supply challenges of paua, the wild venison dish on the menu was far from easy to get right. Air NZ has served venison inflight before, but not wild venison, with a previous attempt to do so around a decade ago proving unsuccessful, according to Koen.
The wild venison now being served, which is sustainably sourced from Fiordland, went through several iterations before the team was happy with it.
"Venison is generally super lean, that's the biggest challenge," said Koen.
"Airline catering means dishes need to remain nice and moist. It's not a restaurant, we're not cooking it and then delivering it straight to the table instantly, so we really focus on richer braising type dishes as opposed to leaner ones which don't stand up so well on flights.
"This one we trialled probably around half a dozen times ourselves amongst our team of chefs. Then we trialled it on flights as well so we could gauge genuine feedback - we did that for the venison as well as the crayfish, and the feedback was really good. But this venison dish, we went through a very robust process with it to develop what, we believe, has ended up as an incredible tasting dish."
Other options are also available onboard in addition to the Taste of Aotearoa menu, which will be identified by a distinctive icon, the airline said.
