THIS POPULAR AIRLINE IS GIVING AIRPLANE FOOD A SERIOUS UPGRADE WITH NEW CHEF MENUS

Airplane food has come a long way from just a little bag of peanuts and the occasional meal that made you question whether eating before takeoff might have been the wiser move.

I’ve had decent plane food and truly bleak plane food, but it’s not like anyone boards a flight for the chicken or the beef anyway. That said, wouldn’t you love to get off the plane thinking about your meal long before you even make it to the baggage claim?

That seems to be what United is aiming for next.

Starting August 1, the airline is rolling out a new lineup of chef-driven meals for United Polaris international business class travelers on select long-haul routes. The project comes out of a collaboration with Chef’s Table, the name behind the Netflix series, and it pulls in 11 chefs from cities across the United network—including Los Angeles, Newark, Chicago, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., London, São Paulo, and Tokyo.

"At its core, this collaboration with Chef's Table is rooted in a shared ambition to redefine what inflight dining can be," said Aaron McMillan, United's Managing Director of Hospitality Programs. "Because our leading global network reaches into the world's greatest food cities, we're able to work hand-in-hand with world-class chefs and translate their points of view into dishes intentionally designed for the realities of travel and inspired by destinations we serve."

Instead of one generically elevated airline menu trying to do everything at once, United is tying each meal to the chef’s home city. Nancy Silverton is behind the Los Angeles menu, for example, which includes burrata, shaved Brussels sprouts, and beef brasato. Out of Newark, Fariyal Abdullahi is serving up chilled tomato soup with crab and Ethiopian-coffee glazed short ribs. Chicago’s Jenner Tomaska has halibut with sauce matelote, while Penelope Wong in Denver is sending five-spice duck wontons into the sky.

And that’s just the U.S. side. London chef Tomos Parry has a menu built around grilled beef fillet, lobster salad, and slow-roasted lamb, while Tokyo chef Tashi Gyamtso is going with poached scallop, a crunchy cabbage salad, and miso-marinated sea bass.

United says these menus will run through September 2026, with another round of dishes from the same chefs taking over in October and rotating seasonally into 2027. Passengers on eligible flights will be able to pre-order the meals beginning five days before departure and up to 24 hours before takeoff.

The airline is also folding in behind-the-scenes video content, so passengers can watch the chefs talk through the dishes while eating them—should they feel compelled to become a food critic at 35,000 feet, that is.

At that point, the only things that seem to be missing are a host stand and a hard-to-get reservation.

2026-06-14T13:39:07Z