I think you have to earn food to really enjoy it.

Item 3 on a Harrier field deployment menu...

1. Sausages

2. No sausages

3. All-in-Stew. (may contain sausages)

wets

Following a very good dinner in (one of) the Changi mess we'd take ourselves off to Changi Village for satays/prawn fried rice and beer at Lim's stall.
Hungry little sods we were in our twenties!

Us: "Hey, Lim, why are you eating with a spoon?"
Lim: "Businessman, no time for chopsticks!" :p

Digressing slightly; some of the best food I had in my twenties was in the Merchant Navy (Elders & Fyffes).

Tengah Airmans Mess
 

....I will go with that food at Tengah was always good, and further to that I would challenge anyone to serve me a Nasi Goring that would be better that that prepared by the local chefs who covered the weekend detail, I have been trying since the mid sixties to find one and no luck to this date, any offers?:ok:

Best JR Mess, Kinloss and Wattisham,(and I hated my posting to Wattisham). Also, a very honourable mention to the soup and sandwich kitchen at Stanley 82-83.

Best RAF cooked meals were at the Williamson site in Belize during an exercise in 84. We had the RAF cooks over from the APC mess, and the food was outstanding.

I really didn't like the baby heads or the compo sausages. I would eat the sausages, but I only partially ate a baby's head once, never again!

I've seen "baby heads" mentioned a couple of times.

What may I ask are "baby heads" ?

Best: Full fry-up in the middle of the night served up by Mobile catering Sqn at Widiwaki airfield Ascension, prior to 26 to 28-hr flights during Op Corporate. During flt, it was pot noodles and dry rations though Andy did rustle up a steak.

Worst: Boiled chicken with some turmeric added to masquerade it as a curry with boiled rice.Served only once at RAF Hullavington because a teach-in of the kitchen staff was conducted!

I think they were the tasty Steak and kidney puddings with soft pastry

I seem to recall Stanmore mess being very good in the middle 80's.

First taste of Venison was from a Scottish chef at Spadeadam who turned a deer we had hit with a sherpa into a nice stew.

RequestPidgeons, concur re the view, and I had the great fortune to have an identical view from my suite at the other end of the floor. You watch, now the word is out they will sell it! :D :ugh:

The kidney, in Steak and Kidney pudding. Horrible stuff, straight from Satan's bum in my opinion.

Baby's heads came from the old tinned 10 man rat packs and were steak and kidney puddings which when you cooked them the pastry looked like a babys head.

They weren't so bad when they were done in a field kitchen but if you heated them in a mess tin they were barfing.

What I want to know is where all the chicken curry in a tin rat packs went. Menu C?

Never saw one ever.

Did like the fruit cake though. Found a 20 year old tin of it last year and it was still as good as I remembered it.

Nasi Goreng - I'm OK - Dutch/Indonnesian neighbours. Makes up for not being able to get an "Indian" in our part of France

It wasn't pastry as such, it was suet they were wrapped in, Frey Bentos do them in small or large tins and microwave in about 30 seconds.

See

Baxters - Fray Bentos 'Classic' Steak and Kidney Pudding


..

Cannot get the puddings but local supermarket (Super-U) does FB S&K pies in a tin

Ye Gods, it was probably 30 years old before it was issued to you.

Pretty good in the RAF Club :)

Best:
Watton OM (concur with thing in Post #3) … Mr Thurston used to drum up some lovely meals, to order. Especially when the PMC came in from the disused airfield with assorted "fur and feather", and Mr T would drum up a Game Casserole for the tiny living-in community.
And the trays of hot food delivered at around 1830 during Happy Hour, to ensure you could sustain your drinking for another 4 hours of so.

Tengah OM for the Nasi Goreng and an endless variety of delicious meals. And the steak sarnies at lunchtime on the terrace.

Worst:
Uxbridge OM, especially the soup. Monday was Spring Vegetable, and then through the week it was 'augmented' by assorted leftovers. By Thursday you could taste the remains of the week's gravy. And the ability to serve inappropriate vegetables: Plaice fillets with Roast Potatoes and Brussels Sprouts just seemed so wrong. (And the inability to get breakfast orders correct, although the morning rush to MoD did put them under a lot of pressure, so I guess they get a marginal pass on that one).

Honourable Mention
Waddington OM, for baking its own bread and rolls.

Worst would be the Officers Mess for us student pilots at Cranwell in 1981-82. Best is difficult to choose from but Honington, Brize and Farnborough were all superb.

My most memorable meal in uniform was in about 1968 on exercise in Germany. We had a covert role which meant we had to carry a weeks rations on us, ie rice and nuts, not even curry powder as the smell could give us away. At ENDEX we were starving and exhausted, moved into a barn and the German farmer's wife sold us one of her chickens which she pot roasted in gravy with potatoes and garlic. Still drool when I think of it.

My father always said his most memorable meal in uniform, sort of, was in Burma in 1944 when they casseroled a Japanese guard's dog in a bucket. Saved his life and he has had a soft spot for Labradors ever since.

Not perhaps the best, but certainly very memorable, was my introduction to curry every Sunday lunch in the O/Mess at Khormaksar. A yellow chicken concoction served in a very large bowl and plonked centre-table, with plain rice and peanuts - delicious, and cooked by Somalis I think. Washed down with copious Amstel. Then down to Tarshyne beach club for poon-hunting ---

Best. Armee de l'Air Officers Mess Istres. Free wine with lunch as well (but no flying after!).

Worst: Army camp somewhere on Salisbury plain. Chefs were infantrymen detailed at short notice. All they had to do was open compo and heat the contents, but they couldn't even manage that.