Lufthansa Business Class, Short Haul, Europe

My first trip on Lufthansa, short haul business class.  It was a good experience. They blow domestic US airlines out of the water.

Flight Details:

• LH109, MUC-FRA
• Departure: 2pm (actual: 2:30pm)
• Arrival: 3pm (actual: 3:15pm)
• Class: Business

With a flight time of just 40 minutes, I absolutely did not expect a meal tray! The moment they could stand up, our flight attendants sprang into motion delivering trays within seconds. It was impressive, really.

Menu.

Our trays came with a cold snack-ish savory platter and a dessert, along with a menu card, advertising the "Tasting" featuring cuisine from Frankfurt. This is part of Lufthansa's new business class catering, featuring what is supposed to be local cuisine from different cities.

The menu came in several languages, including English, but I still wasn't quite sure what I had.

Meal.

"Smoked Tenderloin of Beef accompanied by buttered Wholemeal Spelt Bread with pickled Vegetables, Spundekas Quenelle and Pretzel Crouton."

This was a mixed bag. I love pickles, but the white pickled things on top were way too strongly pickled for me. I'm not sure what they were. The tiny baby zucchini was not pickled, and was fine, but mostly just a small baby cold cooked zucchini. Eh. The white thing also on top was crisp, tart (I assume pickled?) but I'm also not sure what it was. Fascinating stuff.

The beef was actually not bad, tender, sorta like corned beef. I liked the pretzel croutons, even though they were a bit soft. The flavor was good. The bread was kinda stale tasting, a kinda hard slice of spelt bread, that I didn't particularly care for. And buttered, with the beef? That was odd. Mayo, mustard, anything like that would have made more sense.

Then there was a lump that looked at first like tuna salad, but I realized was the Spundekas. I couldn't identify it at all. It sorta tasted like cottage cheese without curds, but, was strangely orange. I later looked it up to find out that it is quark with paprika. Ah. Anyway, I wasn't really into the flavor, but I liked the crunch from the seeds on top.

So, not awful, but not actually very good. The Swiss Airlines savory open faced breads on the same length flight (Zurich to Munich) were considerably better.

***.

"Frankfurter Kranz Kuppel with Almond Brittle".

Then there was dessert-ish.

Yes, this was the English translation. And no, there was no almond brittle anywhere in sight. I have no idea what this was really. It was decent, a mousse, fairly creamy, sweet. On top though was ... torn bread? Stewed plums? Definitely not almond brittle, that is all I know.

This was kinda enjoyable, even if not identifiable. That said, the little pudding I had on the similarly short Swiss airlines flight from Zurich to Munich was much better. I also learned that "Frankfurter Kranz Kuppel" is a Frankfort "Crown Cake", a crown shaped bundt cake with cream filling, which explains the "torn bread", I guess that was the cake. It was light and airy, and I didn't actually like it much. Maybe the pudding was supposed to be like the buttercream usually found in the layers of the cake? Was this a deconstructed version? And the stuff that looked like stewed plum wasn't ... it was just a fruity gel.

So, definitely odd. I liked the mousse, the rest though ... eh.

***.