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Qatar Airways introduces caviar in Business Class as the quality gap keeps widening

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Never an airline to stand still, Qatar Airways has announced it is introducing a caviar service for business class passengers, starting tomorrow.

Caviar is generally served only in First Class cabins, with airlines such as Air France, Emirates and Lufthansa serving the fish roe to top customers.

Whilst Qatar Airways already offers caviar for those flying in First Class on its A380s, this announcement means that many more customers will get to try the savoury snack. It makes it, I believe, the first airline to offer it in business class.

My first taste of caviar was actually on Malaysia Airlines, in their ex-First Business Suite cabin.

Qatar Airways introduces caviar in Business Class

According to the airline: “the new caviar service can be enjoyed as a standalone option or part of the onboard meal courses.” This means you can continue to enjoy Qatar’s dine-on-demand catering, including its signature Arabic mezze starter, as well.

The caviar in question is Baerii from the Siberian sturgeon. This is the most popular cultivated species as it grows to sexual maturity relatively quickly and means the roe can be harvested sooner at around 5-6 years of age.

Qatar Airways has told us it will serve 15g per person. A 30g tin of Baerii caviar retails for around £30 – £40 in the UK which makes this a substantial commitment in aviation spending terms.

The caviar will be served in the traditional way, with garnishes of creme fraiche, chopped chives, chopped red onion and crumbled hard-boiled egg. It is paired with a slice of lemon and thick chunks of Balik style salmon, blinis and Melba toast.

The service will initially start on 13 routes to and from Doha, including:

  • Boston
  • Dallas
  • Hong Kong
  • Houston
  • London
  • Los Angeles
  • Melbourne
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Sao Paulo
  • Singapore
  • Sydney
  • Washington DC

There is good news for UK travellers, with London one of the first cities to see the new service.

Qatar Airways introduces caviar in Business Class

Back in 2013, Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said that “Five per cent of the global caviar production goes to Lufthansa first class. Five per cent. We are the biggest caviar customers in the world.”

This title surely now goes to Qatar Airways which, although only launching on 13 routes initially, will presumably serve far more caviar across its much-larger business class cabins. Lufthansa has also cut back the number of First Class seats it offers since 2013.

Spohr said the volumes Lufthansa needed were “hard to get” which raises the question of where Qatar Airways is sourcing its caviar from. Has it invested in a new aquaculture farm? The Middle Eastern carriers take a far longer view than most – as we covered last year, Emirates has six million bottles of wine and champagne in storage, some of which will not reach maturity until 2037.

Let’s hope Qatar Airways stocks enough of the stuff on board as I expect it will be popular!

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Category

Qatar Airways and Privilege Club

Comments (201)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Harrods says:
    14 Aug14 August 09:36

    Great news as BA put me on QR due to cancelled Beijing flights on avios.

  • Mhughes says:
    14 Aug14 August 09:43

    A nice dollop of hp sauce and that’ll go down a treat

  • Andy says:
    14 Aug14 August 09:54

    Why on earth would anyone want to eat caviar… fish roe is the food of the devil…

    Would rather spend my money on a decent Nebbiolo (and if you’re ever in NZ try the one from Poderi Crisci it’s lush)

  • SG says:
    14 Aug14 August 09:54

    It makes you wonder what they will do in First to differentiate it from Business. The caviar is was the main food difference as I recall. Maybe they’ll serve more in First??

    • Rhys says:
      14 Aug14 August 10:07

      Maybe they’ll serve Beluga caviar instead?!

      • Rob says:
        14 Aug14 August 10:27

        Qatar served me Beluga for lunch at Farnborough!

        • JdeW says:
          14 Aug14 August 11:30

          When I was living in Moscow in the early 90’s, we used to have Beluga by the bucketful! Even our 2 year old daughter developed a taste for it. For her christening party, I remember buying 600g of it for $55!!! Those were the days…before the Russian mafia got involved in the trade and blew it apart…

  • Nathan says:
    14 Aug14 August 10:20

    Will this be offered on the Melbourne flight that goes onto Adelaide or just the other daily flight that goes only to Melbourne?

  • Arie says:
    14 Aug14 August 10:44

    I dont care. I will never leave AA business and First international with their lovely crew, great hospitality and best food service in the air. LoL..

  • Finora says:
    14 Aug14 August 10:48

    Meh, it is pretty sad that the author and Qatar Airways choose to define “Luxury” as something that involves the exploitation and killing of living creatures.

    Eat it if you must but don’t write celebratory posts about your wonky moral compass.

    • Rhys says:
      14 Aug14 August 10:57

      If you’ve come here for vegan editorial I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree…!

      • Rob says:
        14 Aug14 August 10:59

        Sinead’s hotel reviews only cover vegetarian food, to be fair.

      • Roy says:
        14 Aug14 August 11:05

        But why are the travel press – and the airlines themselves – seemingly so dismissive of vegetarian and vegan passengers? I strongly suspect that as a younger generation who are more interested in such issues starts to acquire more spending power, this will become a cohort that airlines will want to be actively courting. Clearly we’re not there yet, though!

        • Rhys says:
          14 Aug14 August 11:07

          What part of the article was dismissive of veg/vegan passengers?

          • Roy says:
            14 Aug14 August 12:41

            “Dismissive” is maybe unfair, but it was more a reaction to your comment of not expecting “vegan editorial” than to the article itself.

            My real complaint is a lack of interest from the travel press at large (not singling out HfP in any way) in covering travel-related issues of interest to vegetarians and vegans – e.g. food options in premium classes – which would I’m sure be of interest to a significant minority of readers.

            Vegetarians and vegans might make up 5-10% of the UK population, but you’d be lucky to see 0.5% of articles specifically discussing issues of interest to that demographic.

        • sayling says:
          14 Aug14 August 11:08

          Possibly because they are still in the minority category?

        • TGLoyalty says:
          14 Aug14 August 12:45

          You expect airlines to take veggie/vegan more seriously than most restaurants?

          It’s a minority of the population who can request special meals like any other dietary requirement, but I agree it’s mostly the same boring food.

          While in don’t like Caviar I don’t understand the issue. People eat all sorts of animal eggs and plenty of fish so what’s the issue with fish that are bred for this purpose being farmed for their eggs?

          • Colin MacKinnon says:
            14 Aug14 August 12:49

            First and Business is a minority of the travelling population!

          • TGLoyalty says:
            14 Aug14 August 13:02

            You understand it’s then a minority or a minority …

          • Roy says:
            15 Aug15 August 14:49

            I expect they may well do in future, if it becomes profitable enough to actively try and attract that demographic – however at the moment they clearly don’t see it as relevant.

      • kiran_mk2 says:
        14 Aug14 August 12:45

        Rhys – I don’t think it’s vegan/vegetarian issue. It’s more that people have issues with the unethical way caviar is harvested. I have the same foibles about fois gras and goose/duck down products, but will happily eat meat.

        • TGLoyalty says:
          14 Aug14 August 13:06

          There’s good and horrible practices in all types of animal rearing and farming.

          You would hope Qatar has chosen an ethical supplier but battery hens, barn cows, salmon farms etc all still exist and other than trusting the supermarket/butcher/resturant owners etc that tell us they use ethical sources we have no idea how ethical other supplies are.

      • Thomas says:
        14 Aug14 August 13:08

        Yet a piece of single use plastic in your vicinity and all hell breaks loose in your reviews.
        Guess one could call that selective tree barking!

    • Dominic says:
      14 Aug14 August 12:42

      I’ve no doubt that your moral compass is absolutely perfect.

      Assume you’re boycotting all brands that have ties to Israel, detest all items from China with the mere sniff of Uighur exploitation, refuse to fly on the basis of emissions etc etc.

      Or is your moral compass just *different*, as opposed to *perfect*?

  • Marcw says:
    14 Aug14 August 11:09

    Rather than getting some press for serving caviar, they should strongly invest in their crew and DOH lounges. Went to the Garden Al Mourjan, and it’s no better than the traditional one – mainly because all the duty-free music leaks into the main area of the lounge and the food is average at best and badly presented.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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