Friends With Benefits

If you or your company does not have a private jet, the next best thing is having friends who do. I had an amazing trip with quite a few challenges when I worked for one of the original founders of Microsoft as he entertained friends on holiday in Europe. Those 3 lucky friends got to travel in style. I had to make sure everything went smoothly.

My first hint that, even with a few days in Rome, Paris and finally Iceland, I was going to have plenty of work to do in my down time came through with the initial passenger profile forwarded to me. Those profiles and briefs can be extremely detailed and complex. They contain information on meal preferences, health issues and specific ways a guest likes things done. This one had paragraphs of food preferences. I was advised that my client was very particular about his eating habits and would not be shy if the menu selections I made did not match those preferences. His girlfriend was a hard core vegan and liked tea that could only be secured from a specialty tea shop. The other 2 had a normal list of preferences.

After studying the profile and actually creating a spreadsheet and flow chart to keep the preferences straight, I began developing meal plans. This was limited by his preferences of only world class beef, wild salmon, mashed potatoes and English green peas for a vegetable. I selected a tried and true caterer for our first leg which would be a transcon flight across the US. I felt pretty confident I had nailed it and spent over an hour in Whole Foods adding preferred snacks, water and produce that met requirements. I got a little feedback when we stopped to refuel that my offerings had fallen a bit short. The client requested I taste test all future offerings to make sure they were up to his standards. The answer is always yes on a private jet, so I assured him that I would taste different samples of catering from a select few caterers I had in my book prior to ordering.

I would select caterers in each destination and have them deliver my proposed menu to the hotel. It was kind of fun because as a crew, we tasted some pretty awesome food in the process. Once a caterer was selected, I would fine tune the order after consulting with the Chef on specialties or suggestions.

In between gourmet tastings, our small crew of 3 enjoyed the extraordinary Villa Borghese with its beautiful gardens and exquisite art. That’s another big difference between commercial and private work. An airline layover is usually about 24 hours long in Europe. You remain until the return flight leaves the next day and pack in all you can. In private aviation, you stay at a destination as long as your boss wants or needs to be there. That allowed for some more leisurely day trips. It was a more relaxing pace and we fit in the Vatican and enjoyed the sights of the city.

Villa Borghese

Vatican

Modern times Roman warrior

We held tastings in a private dining room in the hotel and tasted some outstanding food before making our choices. We knew our jobs were on the line since the client had recently fired a pilot for making poor choices. We hit a home run on that menu, mind you, hitting a home run means his girlfriend let me know that he liked the meal much more than the first. I call that a win, since communication was not high on his priority list. It was time to turn our attentions to Paris.

Paris sounds like a gastronome’s dream for finding great food. It is a dream, but it gets tricky when your boss wants his food served plain, melted butter on the side and requires some seemingly simple ingredients. Ordering salmon, mashed potatoes and English green peas became an ordeal. I was lucky to be there when a dear friend of mine who is a French speaker for Delta was also laying over there with her crew. She took me out for an absolutely epic day to see the sights and sample some of her favorite food finds in the city as locals experience it. What a day!

Best tour guide ever!

Amazing street food

Notre Dame

Armed with a familiarity with my surroundings and a list of top tier caterers, I created a menu for our next leg to Iceland. We then began the tasting and sampling process which I admit was truly enjoyable for our crew of epicureans. We made our selections and seemingly satisfied our client’s desires on our next leg to Keflavik, Iceland. My confidence was growing.

Iceland was not initially on the itinerary, but when we made a fuel stop there on the way to Europe, our guests decided to add it because it looked interesting. You can just do that on a private jet which is a huge perk.

We enjoyed Iceland thoroughly. I had only stopped for fuel prior to that visit and was anxious to see this natural wonder. We did some local hiking and found some truly incredible restaurants to enjoy. I had not realized that a lot of Chefs from Europe and the world were drawn there for the lifestyle and quality of life. Some of the most spectacular meals were served in high end rustic surroundings. The challenge that presented itself there was a lack of beef, and the seafood options leaned towards the exotic (to us) local fish. That meant whale, more whale and fish you never see here. I realized I had my work cut out for me, but took an evening off to visit the Blue Lagoon for a little touristy relaxation.

11pm at the Blue Lagoon

Swim up mud facial bar

Minerals build up on rocks

The driver who took our crew out to the natural spa was a true gift. He has lived his whole life in Iceland and was very proud of his country and shared details about what we saw on the way out and back. He had good reason to be proud. Iceland formed when there was a pulling apart of the North American and European tectonic plates. It sits on a crack in the earth’s crust and has an entire system of reservoirs that are heated by the magma below.  The country is energy-independent and derives power from using these reservoirs of heated water to harness geothermal power. Every home is connected to the system for energy. Talk about clean power, and it is incredibly affordable for the residents. We learned all of that on the way to the Blue Lagoon which is touristy but still a lot of fun. We ate in a dining room overlooking the thermal pools and enjoyed the long day when the sun only sets for an hour or two at night in the summer. The mineral pools were relaxing and featured mud facial stations for your skin and a bar to relax even more. The warm mineral water worked its magic and we slept well.

Back at the hotel in Reykjavik, I got busy planning menus for the return trip. After downloading and studying every menu from the top restaurants in town, I knew I was in trouble. I simply was not going to find what the client required. It was time to think outside the box and create a new strategy. I just wasn’t going to find the main course options I needed there, so I proceeded to download all of the menus from top caterers and restaurants in St. John’s Newfoundland where we would stop for gas. I finally found a good steak, potatoes and peas. Outstanding! I created a “progressive dinner” that would begin with a full selection of main course appetizers from Iceland. Since we left at night, my guests enjoyed a delicious sampling of the best creations from Iceland and settled in for some sleep. We arrived in St. John’s, our guests got off the plane to stretch and I greeted the caterer who brought outstanding cuts of beef, potatoes and peas. Of course I had a variety of food for the other guests, but theirs was a less confining set of choices.

The guests seemed to get a kick out of this progressive dinner, and the food worked out perfectly. The boss did decide he no longer liked peas on that leg at 40,000 feet, so I put on my magician’s hat and created a new vegetable side dish from the other items in the order for everybody else. With disaster averted, everyone napped and relaxed for the last leg home.

That trip taught me that some folks don’t want enticing new cuisine, they want home wherever they are. I also got some good training in staying flexible and changing things on the fly as needed. Everyone kept their job and our guests left happy so I’m going to call that trip a successful one. It’s like we say in aviation; Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

I walked away from it with new tools in my toolbox and more confidence that a solution is always out there. I had a pretty good visit to Rome, Paris and Reykjavik while getting work done, so I was grateful for my new opportunities.