(newspaper online): With very low expectations, we pre-ordered food for a trip to Budapest in late June. The order page stated “The meal consists of a hot meal with a sweet dessert.” The following menus were chosen:
1. Black Angus Burger
Description (from Danish.no): “Black Angus burger with brioche bun, red cheddar cheese, smoked turkey, mayonnaise and chunky tomato compote. Served with a bag of Frosta salty chips.”
Price: 139 NOK
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2. “Children's Rights”
Description (from Danish.no): “Penne Bolognese. Penne pasta served with classic Bolognese sauce made with minced chicken. Topped with grated cheese. Dessert: Chocolate covered donuts.
Price: 109 NOK
3. “Lifestyle Plate – Vegetarian (VLML & VGML)”
Description (from Danish.no): “Vegetarian crepe with tomato, served with avocado puree and spinach, and chika barley salad with green peas and cherry tomatoes. Dessert: chia porridge with blueberries.”
Price: 139 NOK
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4. “Standard Meal – Hot Lunch/Dinner (Seedover)”
Description (from Danish.no): “Butter chicken masala. Chicken breast strips fried in a butter-based masala sauce, served with yellow basmati rice and vegetable jalfrezi. Dessert: carrot cake with granulated sugar.
Price: 139 NOK
Food delivery on norwegian
The first dishes to arrive were the hamburgers, delivered shortly after drinks were sold out. We ordered two hamburgers here, so two out of five people got their food. About ten minutes later, the kids' dish arrived, followed by the vegetarian dish five minutes later. Of course, you don't expect food to arrive at the same time in a restaurant, but if a Norwegian is choosing something, the kids' menu is likely to be a priority.
What about the standard meal? No, it didn't come. When we first asked, we got a response from the flight attendant that she would check, but “she only has four hands.” So far that's a very good trait for a flight attendant to have, but perhaps not anatomically correct since we only saw two of them.
There was little response to this dish, so we asked a new member of the flight crew about this ordered dish, and were told “we didn't receive it”. We'll get back to how to fix that later in this review.
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Norwegian: Black Angus Burger
The hamburger looked undeniably tempting in the pictures, and it's an easy dish to prepare.
Although expectations were very low, they were at least there. When the burger arrived, the bun was very firm, but it was warm on the sides. After the first few bites, one of us thought it tasted a lot like a burger you'd buy at the grocery store. The other thought the meat “tasted like candy.”
Even two bites from the inside had to be taken, because the burger was frozen in the middle. Here, the rest of the family had not received their food yet, so we called the flight crew to ask for the food we had not received, and to inform them that the burger could not be eaten because it was frozen.
The response was, “There's something wrong with the oven.”
Admittedly, they recovered the burgers and tried to reheat the partially eaten burgers. Then came back two bricks, both of which were inedible. Stone bread that could probably be used as a foundation for a house, but not for eating. The validity of reheating a burger twice in the same oven it was eaten from is debatable.
The chips were to taste and were very good.
Norwegian: Children's Act
When this one arrived I had some expectations from a picky person in the family who likes simple flavors. Pasta is usually good, but this one had solid pasta with a little bit of sauce. There was a bit of a taste, which would have worked against my taste buds if the pasta pieces hadn't been so hard that they were almost impossible to eat.
Norwegian: Lifestyle Dish – Vegetarian
The first thing we noticed was that there was a missing pie here. It simply wasn’t in the box. However, the rest was very tasty, and three of our testers tasted the dish with a nod and a thumbs up. The reason for the split, of course, was the somewhat chaotic delivery, which meant that no one ate at the same time.
Here there was flavour, and even if the expected pie was missing, it was a great filling dish. We're still a little unsure if the carrot cake delivered was actually vegan (here it was supposed to be chia porridge with blueberries, but it wasn't).
Summary and conclusion
Unfortunately we were unable to sample the regular food as it never arrived. When we approached the staff on board we were told “it’s not our fault” and “we were given what was given to us”. Of course, mistakes can happen, but when we asked what to do, the first response was “it’s none of our business”. Eventually another member of staff said we would have to refer ourselves to customer service after we got home (see note! on this).
Taste-wise, the hot burger was about as exciting as watching paint dry, and hardly worth a two on the dice. The veggie dish barely managed to climb to a three, while the kids’ dish was just a single dish in all its misery. But, as you might have guessed, the utterly deplorable experience of reheating food, missing plates, and completely inedible food drags the conclusion down a bottomless pit.
It's truly impressive how they manage to serve such poor food. Recommendation? Eat before you go, or bring your own. Even a sweaty packed lunch makes up for the unpleasantness of the dining experience.
note! We then contacted customer service via chat. We were then told that we would have to submit a complaint via an online form. This was submitted, but no response has been received yet (24 hours later). The cabin crew offered us some paninis to replace the food that had not arrived and was uneatable. If you like cheese sandwiches with unbaked bread, this is an option you can take on board.
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