Winner: Emirates

To ensure its supply chain for vegetables, herbs, and fruit remained rock steady, the airline’s Emirates Flight Catering last year acquired the largest indoor vertical farm in the world, Dubai South, now known as Emirates Bustanica. Such vision affords the airline to “uplift,” in airline food-service parlance, more than 55 million meals annually. Under the command of executive chef Hugh Styles, formerly of the Waldorf Astoria Berlin and the Sheraton Grand Dubai, Emirates’ new kitchen facility can produce 115,000 meals a day, or 42 million meals per year. The airline group’s second, slightly more extensive set of kitchens — also under the direction of the agile chef Styles — now provides every meal for the 190 other airlines at Dubai International Airport. Bottom line, this Food & Wine Global Tastemaker is gargantuan, and it’s laser-focused on quality and corners like a Formula 1 racer.

Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines operates the “ultra-long-range” Airbus 350-900, which can handle more than 9,700 miles. That’s made Los Angeles, a 15-hour marathon of some 8,774 miles from Singapore, a nonstop destination. The airline was the winner of Skytrax’s Best Airline award in 2023 and 2024, and the racy cuisine played a big role in that. As any visitor to Singapore knows, the mélange of Southeast Asian spices and cooking methods is peerless. Right on trend, the airline’s chefs have adapted their own takes on Singapore’s famous hawkers of craft street food like satay skewers and bak chor mee — the robust black vinegar and soy sauce-drenched pork with noodles. That’s matched with otherworldly service: On select flights in Premium Economy, Business, and First, you can “book the cook” and order in advance from an extended menu.

Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways has also focused its ultra-long-range business, now with nonstop flights from Doha to LAX on the Boeing 777 and Airbus 350-1000. The flexibility of the big new galleys that these behemoth planes boast has enabled Qatar’s chefs to engineer more refined dishes to be cooked and served upstairs. You don’t have to fly to experience it; Qatar’s augmented reality allows you to “inhabit” a Business QSuite. Select the Starter screen on the QSuite monitor (as you would in-flight), and a virtual burrata with heirloom tomatoes plate materializes on your dining table. The soup tab offers a pear soup with parmesan crostini. The main is a roasted rack of two loin lamb chops (with the bones standing at parade rest) beside a pillow of mashed potatoes, while dessert is a pistachio mousse with an oat biscuit and spiced plums. Comfort food at 30,000 feet takes work.

Air New Zealand

On Air New Zealand, everything is familiar, yet very much not. It’s no accident that Peter Jackson filmed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in his native land: It’s Oceania and, by definition, the botany and wildlife are radical. The business class menu’s mission statement explains “A Taste of Aotearoa,” as the Indigeneous Maori call New Zealand. The menu touts the rewarewa tree, the 90-foot-tall native of the North Island, whose nectar is transformed into a dark, rich honey served in a vinaigrette atop a grilled zucchini side. It’s the ideal accompaniment to the main of red duck curry and jasmine rice with daikon. The Maori use tree bark to heal wounds, a cool bit of homeopathic information not usually found on jet menus. This airline’s food makes you want to be on a flight inbound to Auckland, not out.

All Nippon Airways

All Nippon Airways (ANA), was founded in 1953 as Nippon Herikoputā Yusō, or Japan Helicopter and Aeroplane Transport Company. Seventy-plus years later, its long-haul menu in first class offers a page of all-Japanese choices and a page of Western dishes. Trust us, leave the West behind. Renowned Kyoto chef Yoshihiro Takahashi, of the 400-year-old restaurant Hyotei, created the set menu for ANA. Your sazizuke, or starter, of “garland chrysanthemum” and deep-fried wheat gluten is bracing — garland chrysanthemum being leaves of the daisy family, like dandelion greens. The choice of ingredients in your second-course omelet includes a lily bulb (yes!) or our favorite, the conger eel. Grilled pomfret, an Indo-Pacific pompano, is your main, and it’s marinated in miso and soy before being served with deep-fried taro, a fine power pack of healthful protein. Pre-landing light bites to be downed with a slash of saké include dried bonito and dried horse mackerel, just the spring you need to wrestle out through the Narita traffic.

Air France

Air France’s food sits on this list as a bastion of European cuisine. It’s a little like the revitalized Notre Dame cathedral in Paris: a deep, living expression of the continent’s culture. For flights departing Paris, the airline has most recently teamed up with three-time Michelin-star recipient Emmanuel Renaut, chef of the acclaimed Megève restaurant Flocons de Sel (translation: “Flakes of Salt”), to add old-fashioned kitchen goodness and culinary genius to its menus. But Air France hasn’t stopped there. For flights departing San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami, it tapped three-time Michelin star winner and French expatriate Dominique Crenn, of San Francisco’s Atelier Crenn, to design the food. And three-starred French expat Olivier Chaignon, of Tokyo’s award-winning L’Osier, oversees the menu for flights that depart Tokyo. The takeaway? Air France is French through-and-through and takes its brilliant kitchen all over the world.

Cathay Pacific

Cathay Pacific has earned its high-wire reputation for stellar food. The airline was founded in Hong Kong in the heady post-World War II moment of 1946 by two demobilized war pilots-turned-entrepreneurs, one American, the other British, who caught the wave of the Asian air-transport boom and appreciated the finer things in life. Their bet paid off. Ever innovative, the four-time “world’s best” airline, as ranked by the London-based Skytrax, began to take its menus to the next culinary level six years ago. Hong Kong Flavours is a bright selection of signature local dishes, clay pot rice, dim sum (at breakfast!), braised abalone, and not least, the classic dessert, a tapioca-pearl, milk-tea pudding. Beyond that, the airline’s exquisite hospitality extends past the aircraft: Its Hong Kong hub boasts five well-appointed lounges, many of which feature a teahouse, noodle bar, food hall, bar, and coffee cart. There’s even a partnership with celebrated Hong Kong restaurant Mott 32 — highlighting rotating Cantonese specials. All that to say, Cathay Pacific’s food is the ultimate in Hong Kong patriotism.

Ethiad Airways

Etihad’s generous, cozy long-haul menus are swanky. At breakfast, the eggs are cooked to order, an amazing service at 30,000 feet, with sides of hash browns, rashers of bacon, and baked beans. British tradition presents itself at dinner in the roasted beef tenderloin, accompanied by heirloom carrots, steak fries, and, of course, au jus. A finely detailed wine list includes an exceptional 2009 vintage Champagne Devaux. Quaffing a bottle of that while you work on your papers conjures images of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill – bowler, magnificent bulldog jowls over the wing collar, morning suit – doing likewise during his legendary reign. Clubbier than that is hard to find.

Japan Airlines

Japan Airlines’ (JAL) long-haul menus cover all the bases and then some, but several listings on the first-class drinks list offer a picture of the deep care put into every aspect of its offerings. Market background: Sake is no longer a national passion restricted to Japan; global aficionados are increasingly on the hunt. So it’s quietly glamorous that JAL’s wines and spirits bosses have hunted down extraordinary sakes and shochus — shochu being the vodka-like distillate with slightly higher alcohol content (25% to 40%) than traditionally “brewed” sake (15% to 16%).

The standout JAL sake is Juyondai Junmai Daiginjo, named for the 14th-generation scion of the founding family of the Takagi Sake Brewery. It’s brewed in the Yamagata Prefecture (sake’s Pomerol, if you will) from Yamada Nishiki rice grown in the rice heartland of Toku-A. Of the three shochus on offer, the star is the ultra-rare amber distillate Hyakunen no Kodoku, made from a barley malt by the Kuroki Honten distillery and aged in white oak. That is seriously luxurious hunting for your fliers.

La Compagnie

La Compagnie’s all-business-class model allows the startup airline, founded in 2013 by French airline entrepreneur Frantz Yvelin, to be fast and nimble on its feet. That does not mean scrimping, however. Nowhere is that clearer than in the food and drink. On the popular Orly-Newark flights, the four-course menu wins for its light yet firm presence: a starter of leek garnished with shredded beef under a mango vinaigrette; a main of veal shoulder with a side of cheese mashed potatoes, or shrimp with black rice risotto; a cheese plate of Gruyère, cabécou, and walnuts; and a chocolate mousse for an elegant finish. It’s all business and on-trend across the hospitality sector: no-frills luxe.