Beef Sukiyaki on SQ Book the Cook

Fortunately my upgrade request went through on the return leg today, and of course, I took advantage of the opportunity to "book the cook." One of the selections from LAX was beef sukiyaki. Given my previously questionable experiences with Japanese food on airplanes, I wasn't expecting much. But yet another part of me kinda wanted to see if SQ could do any better, especially for something like sukiyaki; they couldn't possibly bring out a nabemono pot and raw egg in midair, could they?

They didn't. (Darn...deep down inside, I was hoping to be surprised.) It was still good though, being mildly sweet and tender like it should be, and it all went down very quickly. But lacking the egg dip (and dismissing stuff like the tofu for argument's sake), I couldn't help but think about how it effectively just became a bowl of gyu-don as a result, and that what could have been something as exquisite as lobster thermidor was subsituted with a bowl of Yoshinoya instead. BTW, the "standard issue" meal tonight, had I not booked the cook, was a duck breast stuffed with porcini mushrooms and wrapped in bacon, done by none other than Nancy Oakes (and with a spinach salad too, despite the E. Coli scare). I wonder if that were any good...it sure sounded like it.

Other than that, I don't know if there was anything else too notable aside from the fact that they didn't bring out satay as a starter (maybe that's only for flights leaving Singapore?). Instead, there were some small hors d'voeures like a "warm Thai style crab cake" as well as a Caesar salad with "roasted cajun spiced chicken," the latter of which turned out surprisingly spicy. The meal closed with some Haagen-Dazs served in porcelain bowls rather than the usual single-serving paper cartons with the little plastic scooper.