You may remember a few weeks back I blogged about the amazing meals on Virgin from Brisbane to LAX.  So on our way home, we were on Delta flights from Orlando via LAX to Sydney (Delta is codeshare with Virgin).

Now I am not sure if it was just wishful thinking, but for some stupid reason I expected the meals to be just as wonderful as on the way over…

I’m guessing you are already seeing where this is going, right?  On my boarding pass, it clearly stated I had a special meal – guess what wasn’t on the list the crew had.  My partner’s meal was listed, the 3 kids meals were listed… but no meal for me.  Perhaps they knew exactly how many donuts I had eaten in the US and figured my health kick needed to start immediately?

But a 15 hour flight with no meal is not a fun place to be – hangry plus sleep deprived is not a pretty sight – I really would look like my passport photo at the end of it.

The crew member I spoke to said “she would see if she could find something”.

So first meal service and they hand out the special meals to everyone else, except me.  Then they announced the meal choices for the rest of economy and one of the items was a vegetarian ravioli – sounds ok to me.  However before the cart got to us, they come to me with a “spare special meal” which a the lacto-ovo meal that someone else declined.  This person must have had psychic vision and declined it, as this meal was the exception to the rule about special meals being better quality.  It was awful!  Soggy, bland pasta.   I ate most of it and then wished I’d just waited for the cart and asked if there was a ravioli available.  Afterwards my sister-in-law said the ravioli was great… damn it.

But wait, how about a nice breakfast?  One of the reasons I order an asian inspired vegetarian meal is to avoid the hideousness that is a plain egg omelette (it seems its compulsory for the vegetarian breakfast).  Or worse, the crayola crayon flavoured vegetarian sausages… or those awful plastic button mushrooms that must be manufactured at Boeing.    But hard to imagine, the breakfast was actually worse than the dinner – a plain egg white omelette with tasteless spinach.

For the love of all things holy, does nobody try these meals before serving them?  All the taste, life and joy was completely sucked out of them.

Vegetarian food should be colourful, flavourful and inspiring.  There are estimated to be 375 million vegetarians worldwide and I guarantee every one of them would have hated this meal.   It was enough to make me want to slash my wrists with a plastic airline knife.  Seriously there are worldwide the most amazing vegetarian options and you serve a plain egg white omelette?  WTF Delta…

Delta your special meals based on this flight were truly appalling!   Which is why Virgin, you lost my business, I have made my choice and I’m back to Air New Zealand for my next flight to the USA next year…