Truly Scrumptious

Malaysia Airlines Business Class

This is a bit of an unusual post. I decided to review my experience of Malaysia Airlines Business Class, after all any business class travel is quite pricey, so the food should be a feature rather than something ordinary.
Firstly a note on the seating – you get masses of space. The seat was much wider than me, I felt very comfortable – there was more space on the long haul A380 from Kuala Lumpur to London, and the Perth to Kuala Lumpur flight was still quite roomy – the seat reclined to an ‘almost’ flat bed at a bit of an angle. On the long haul the seat went completely flat and was very comfortable, I had room to lay on my side as well as my back and I got more than 6 hours sleep on a 12 hour flight, which was very good.

Legroom Perth to KL:

Legroom KL to London:

Before the flight we were invited to select our meals via the ‘chef on call’ service. Unfortunately, this wasn’t easy to do – the email gave me a link to the website where I selected all of my dishes for each flight, but then I was unable to select Pete’s dishes or get back into the booking to amend it in any way. He had to go through the menu and choose all of his selections by reference number and then call Malaysia Airlines to book the meals.
If I were to book this again, I probably wouldn’t have booked via chef on call anyway because you do forget what you have ordered, and when it comes to it, you may not fancy that dish at that particular time, so it’s better to choose from the in-flight menu in my opinion.
Having said that, most of the dishes that I ordered were delicious – some better than others, but compared with general airline food they were very good quality.
This process could have been made easier.

Ruby Passion:

Included in the drinks on board was a Ruby Passion, the Malaysia Airlines signature mocktail of calamansi, tea and spices. The airline lounges were quite variable. Perth Golden lounge was fairly small, clean and functional with comfy chairs. There wasn’t a huge choice of food available, but there was plenty to drink. The lounge at Kuala Lumpur was as expected, really busy but quite large
and a little tired looking. I think it is in need of some renovation. Having said that there were a multitude of food choices and I tried the Nasi Lemak which was divine. The Heathrow Terminal 4 lounge was lovely, really clean, fresh and stylish, excellent selection of food and drink and lovely helpful staff.

KL Lounge nasi lemak:

Here is a selection of some of the dishes we had on board the aircraft:

Hot cakes with orange ragout, lemon curd and vanilla sauce:

The pancakes were absolutely delicious – a huge portion of loveliness. The flavours complemented each other perfectly.

Braised chicken curry:

The chicken curry was tasty and tender with a nice selection of vegetables.

Signature Satay:

Satay is served as an appetiser on the long haul flights – you get a choice of beef or chicken or a mixture. It is very authentic, with a lovely sauce and accompanying onion and rice cubes.

Starter of fish sashimi and salad:

The first time I have ever had sashimi on board a plane – it was tasty and good quality.

Nasi Lemak:

The Nasi Lemak is served with a very spicy prawn sambal. It was quite delicious and very filling, although I did prefer the Nasi Lemak in the KL lounge.

Chocolate torte:

Yum – chocolate torte with berry compote – this cake was as good as any dessert that you would get in a top class restaurant.

Prawn and gnocchi starter:

This starter was okay but not as tasty as promised.

Garoupa fish curry:

A lovely fish curry with a thick authentic sauce. The portion was huge and I couldn’t eat it all. I would like to have seen a more traditional Malay vegetable accompaniment.

Champagne:

The champagne was nice – quite dry and biscuit coloured. It certainly helped me to sleep.

Salmon starter:

A nice sized portion of smoked salmon and roe.

Beef Wellington:

This was the one dish that I found really disappointing. The beef was very tough and the pink beetroot sauce did not look very appetising although it tasted okay. I left most of this dish.

Banoffee Pie:

Excellent – nice balance of sweetness without being overly sickly or too strongly bananaish (is that a word?). Yes I thoroughly enjoyed this.

French toast with pear and berry compote:

This was very pleasant – a lovely choice for breakfast.

Pan fried seabass and salmon:

I am not quite sure how they managed to cook the fish so perfectly in an aeroplane, but they did. The accompanying vinaigrette salad was a little acidic and I would have preferred some vegetables or ratatouille. The fish was very tasty, and again – huge portions.

As well as the standard meals, snacks and drinks were available throughout the flights. The service was impeccable, all of the cabin crew knew my name and they stopped to chat and make sure that we were okay. I have flown business class before on other airlines – Thai, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and also previously on Malaysia but many years ago.
Malaysia Airlines business class is among the top ten in Asia and the catering as among the top ten in the world. I would definitely fly with Malaysia again, I would probably not preorder the dishes, but the majority of the food was lovely, the facilities were all that you could need and the service was excellent.

Travel Date – May 2014

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