Just In: Chef Garima Arora Unveils A Curated Vegetarian Menu For Qatar Airways’ Business Class

We often wonder why flight food rarely tastes the way it was intended to. It is an empirical fact that the high altitude, lack of humidity, reduced air pressure, recirculated air, engine and wind blare, and the oddity of mounting a tube affect the way we perceive food and beverages. Defying the netherworld of mid-air taste, two Michelin-starred Chef Garima Arora teams up with Qatar Airways to braise an exclusive Business Class menu. The four-cycle menu, rotating every three months, is set to board flights from November and will be available on routes from Doha to India. “This new menu is our dedication to enhancing the experience for our Indian passengers,” shares Xia Cai, Senior Vice President of Product Development & Design of Qatar Airways.

At The Crossroads

Earlier this year, Qatar Airways won the World’s Best Airline title for 2025, marking the ninth time the airline has soared to this honour in the awards’ history. It bagged multiple awards, with its Business Class, Al Mourjan Garden Lounge securing the World’s Best Business Class Lounge award. With a commitment to the brand’s accolades, Xia Cai, Senior Vice President of Product Development and Design of Qatar Airways shares, “Our partnership with Chef Garima Arora, celebrating her refined culinary artistry, reflects our shared pursuit of excellence.”

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Chef Garima Arora, who recently opened ‘Banng’ in the heart of Bandra, Mumbai, unveils an inaugural menu for the airline’s business class rooted in India’s Satvik bhojan. She muses, “By choosing to do a vegetarian menu for the first cycle of our collaboration with Qatar Airways, I wanted to share with the world the nuances of Indian vegetarian cooking and its many health benefits, especially while travelling.”

Taking Off With Comfort Food

With a penchant for regional cuisines and a veneration for the diversity, heritage, and authenticity of Indian cooking rather than globalised versions, Arora discovered her ‘experimenting with food’ moment early in her life. The chef perceives Indian food as complex and versatile, which is palpable in the menu that borrows from a vernacular lineage—a natural foundation for her peripatetic curated plates. From reimaging her favourite chaat flavours to the traditional Sattvik wisdom of her grandmother’s millet khichdi, paired with pickled and fermented sides, “it’s my way of showing how Indian food can be not only delicious but also thoughtful,” avers Arora. 

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Qatar Airways’ Business Class dining is crafted through a meticulously choreographed culinary system, where most dishes are made from scratch using over 165,000 pounds of fresh produce daily. Subsequently, the menu takes off with a chic rendition of chaat, where she preserves the sweet and zesty notes of this street-side favourite while plating it in the modern Indian dining way. This reflects her approach to storytelling through food, with ingredients, techniques, and recipes to connect to culture and memory. Her next dish is an ode to the recently ascended grain in the global palate. In 2023, the United Nations recognised Millets—an ancient Indian grain—for their resilience and nutritional depth. Elevating this humble staple, she whips ‘My Grandmother’s Millet Khichdi,’ underscoring it through an Ayurvedic, Sattvik lens to offer a comforting, well-balanced bowl of nourishment designed to land softly with travellers.

An Ode To Nostalgia

For the perfect ending, she adds reimagines to the most consumed Indian beverage, ‘chai.’ “And almost every Indian has at some point dunked a Parle-G into a hot cup of tea,” quips Arora. The ‘Dunker’ dessert is the perfect reinterpretation of that ‘biscuit dunk’ that has been a ritual for years. For the airlines, bakery teams prepare fresh breads and pastries, while specialised teams portion, seal, and chill meals under strict hygiene controls before they’re transported to aircraft. “The ‘Dunker’ dessert is designed to recreate the joy of that biscuit-dunk—soft yet crisp, spiced and juicy but elevated into a refined finale worthy of Business Class dining,” explains Arora

The collaboration between Chef Garima Arora and Qatar Airways arrives at a time when food is becoming the global driver for cultural associations. From immersive dining to revisiting ancient cooking techniques, food is serving up a buffet of experiences that explores the themes of memory, belonging and origin stories. In 2024, the World Tourism Organisation reported that over 60% of tourists participated in food-related experiences. With food even driving tourism at this juncture, their partnership is a reminder that food, even at 30,000 feet, can still pilot the origin stories we carry with us.