Gordon Ramsey won’t eat airplane food. What else do you eat at 30,000 feet?

I came across a story recently and while it was hardly earth-shattering news, it still grabbed some headlines. Gordon Ramsey, a TV chef, declared in no uncertain terms that he would not eat airplane food. He didn’t put it as simply as that and he stirred a few expletives into the pot but the point was the same. He wouldn’t touch it with a forty-foot fork.

He was once involved in preparing food for an airline and he won’t eat it because he knows what it takes to prepare the meals and the length of time the food is hanging around before it is eaten. So, I assume that when Mr. Ramsey takes a flight somewhere he brings a packed lunch.

I don’t know what exactly he expects. The primary function of any airline is to get us from A to B as efficiently and as safely as possible. On long-haul flights, passengers will get hungry and at thirty thousand feet there aren’t too many options available to the cabin crew. They can let you starve or they can supply you with some pre-prepared food. Ok, so it’s not going to be mouth- watering but at least it’s edible. Presumably it is subject to some hygiene and food safety regulations so it should be safe as well.

I don’t think that anyone, apart from Gordon Ramsey that is, expects Michelin type meals when you’re flying above the clouds. Most of us want something to fill a gap and at that height you can’t be too fussy. In my own experience, I have found that airplane food has improved over the years and I have yet to be poisoned by any of it. Which is more than I can say about some of the food I’ve eaten at ground level.

There was a time when our knowledge of food was limited to a decent beef stew or a nice bit of bacon and cabbage. The most important thing was to have a flowery potato. After that, everything else fell into place. If there was a really special occasion you might venture to a restaurant and treat yourself to a steak. But there had to be a good reason for that.

Then, we started to get a bit cocky and if the steak wasn’t done to our liking, we sent it back. If the soup wasn’t warm enough, back it went. Effectively, we were telling the chef to get his act together and maybe that didn’t go down too well.

It’s probably our fault that chefs decided they needed to become aggressive in the kitchen. They got angry and learned to shout a lot. Having temper tantrums and throwing pots and pans was essential for a life in a white hat. Or maybe that was only for television.

There is an abundance of cookery programmes on the television these days like Master Chef, Jamies 15 miniute meals, Can’t Cook – Won’t Cook, The Naked Chef. There are more celebrity chefs than you can wave a blender at and they all have their own way of doing things. Some of them often lose the run of themselves.

I came across a story involving Jay Rayner, a food critic with The Observer, and he described an experience he had at Le Cinq, Four Seasons Hôtel George V, in Paris. He went for a meal with a female companion and the bill, including service and modest wine came to €600.

This place is a Michelin three-star restaurant, or the scene of the crime as Mr. Rayner described it. In terms of value for money and expectation Le Cinq supplied by far the worst restaurant experience he has endured in his 18 years as a food critic.

If you are going to fork out €600 for a bit of grub, you are entitled to be miffed if you’re not happy with it. The canapé, he said, released stale air with a tinge of ginger and his companion said it was like eating a condom that had been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s.

He described the main course of pigeon as being served so pink it just might fly again given a few volts and it arrived with a heap of couscous and a tiny portion of lamb for €95 and it tasted of little.

He described the dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile with an elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that had fallen off a burns victim. He said the cheesecake tasted of grass clippings.

They each drank one glass of champagne, one glass of white and one of red, chosen by the sommelier from a wine list that included bottles priced at €15,000 each. The drinks bill was €170 and the total bill was €600. As for the overall experience, he reckons that If he works hard, one day, with luck, he may be able to forget it.

I don’t know anything about food critics but I really enjoyed Mr. Raynor’s review and it made me laugh. On the other hand, it made me wonder about how restaurants like this survive. Obviously, there are people who are prepared to pay these outlandish prices because they either enjoy the experience or they don’t know any better. A touch of the Emperors’ new clothes maybe.

I don’t have a very sophisticated pallet and I love nothing more than a nice feed of bacon and cabbage with some flowery spuds and a knob of butter. I don’t know what Mr. Raynor would make of that but for sure, restaurants would struggle to over glamourise it no matter what language they used.

It is what it is. Good food for less than €600 and you don’t need any Michelin stars to produce it.