A look into Emirates’ sky dining

Emirates shares facts about the quantities of gourmet products, dedicated chefs, and attention to detail required to provide fine dining in the sky for more than 77 million customers a year.

Emirates caters for 490 flights daily, with 149 meals served every minute — totalling an enormous 215,000 meals every day, served across the globe.

It takes 1400 dedicated chefs to make these meals, at the vast Emirates Flight Catering Facility in Dubai, and across partner caterers around the world.

Over the course of one-year onboard Emirates, customers consumed a wide variety of nutritious and delicious meals from a library of 2,200 varied recipes each month.

Balancing essential carbohydrates, proteins and vegetables; Emirates served 6 million kg fresh chicken, 350,000 kg beef, 266,000 kg Atlantic salmon fillets, 2.2 million kg whole potatoes, 1.7 million kg pasteurized eggs, 3.1 million kg freshly baked breads and pastries, andthousands of vegan and vegetarian meals.

To create dishes rivalling those served at top restaurants, Emirates incorporates world renowned premium ingredients and regional specialties, such as truffle, foie gras, black cod, Canadian lobster, corn-fed chicken breast, Japanese nori seaweed, Emirates handmade pasta, sushi and glacier 51 fish.

Dishes are further enhanced with gourmet garnishes like Bzar spices from the Gulf, Beurre D’Isigny butter, gold and silver leaf, served on more than 300 Emirates desserts, Himalayan pink salt, saffron and edible flowers for delicate and fragrant presentation.

All of these enable Emirates to offer inflight dining that is unmatched, featuring menus inspired by different cuisines all over the world.

For the Filipino palate specifically, Emirates serve a number of Filipino-inspired dishes onboard including bulalo, beef tapa, chicken tocino, bangus sisig, pancit canton and sticky rice cake with coconut caramel sauce, giving Filipinos a taste of home while away from home, while allowing non-Filipinos to experience what the local cuisine can offer.

On many European routes, Emirates is now treating Economy Class customers to individual pots of Marshfield’s ice-cream, creamy organic ice cream with 60 percent dairy content from a family farm in the Cotswolds, UK.

On routes from Ireland, Emirates serves rich yogurt from Killowen Farm, a single origin dairy yogurt producer.

Even snacks onboard Emirates are elevated and thoughtfully selected. Last year, Emirates customers relished 2 million packages of mixed nuts in various sizes, 250,000 dates, 22,000 kilograms of Kalamata olives and more than 40 million pieces of gourmet chocolate.