Despite all the jibes, this is why I love plane food

"And what'll it be today, Sir, the chicken or the beef?" There is no better signifier that all is well at 32,000 feet above the Pacific and, having survived chaotic scenes at the airport and the office you have made it: escapism – via a beef and beer hotpot or a chicken korma – awaits.

Yes, the bread rolls will always (always!) remain cold in the middle and reheated to plywood levels of crust density. Yes, most pasta options are about one-hour-at-a-rolling-boil beyond al dente. And yes, the portions seemingly shrink each and every year. And yet I still excitedly eye the trolley on its way towards me each and every flight.

My wife has a habit of shaming me for having the gall (gumption, surely?) to go for seconds on a long-haul. And don't get her started on my embarrassingly impatient tendency to pre-order special meals lacking gluten-y goodness or essential sodium and sugar in order to be fed first. I know it was the clichéd cuisine to hate: always trolled for being overcooked, bland and unimaginative.

There are dedicated Reddit feeds and Facebook communities with horror stories, but in my lifetime of eating in economy I can think of only a couple of truly average meals served in the sky.

One of them was on a recent flight out of New Zealand, so I excused it as the sky chefs being a tad out of practice. The other was a particularly stodgy and unimaginative tomato tortellini somewhere above the clouds in Central Asia, served up by a now-defunct Italian airline. I can't put Alitalia's long-winded bankruptcy saga down to under delivering on plane pasta, but I can't rule it out either – such is the importance to some passengers of getting mile-high meals right. And most do.

Don't deny it, you never turn your nose up at it. What else is there to do on a plane, but slovenly stuff your face and binge-watch box sets?

In fact, some airlines are so successful at their in-flight meal options they've started selling meals on solid ground too: Finnair started selling some of its meals in stores and delivery services in its home market in 2020, while budget carrier AirAsia is doing one better by expanding its on-the-ground Santan restaurant beyond Malaysia into Indonesia and the Philippines. Clearly it's not just me sometimes craving pulling back piping hot tin foil to reveal the brackish and beige contents within.

In this modern world of an abundance of choices, you sometimes want the simplicity of a tray flung into your lap with a dismissive: "Sorry, we're out of chicken".

True, far more time, money and effort is reserved for the pointy end as you'd expect, but nutritionists and food technicians also finesse economy class menus to get the balance right. And the smarter airlines use it as a way to show off destinations: a Cornish cream tea, a cooked Irish breakfast, a nasi lemak, lamb biryani, New York cheesecake or stack of pancakes reintroduce you to a city well before you touch down.