Best and Worst Food
 

What is the best and the worst food you have ever eaten at an air force managed or air force related catering facility of any kind.

For me the best would be the trout we had for lunch at 280 SU on Mt Olympus on the day the Command Catering Officer was doing his pre-AOC's inspection. Closely followed by the scotch pies and baked beans served at 4 a.m. at Leuchars during TACEVAL.

The worst - Brown Windsor soup in the studes mess at Cranwell.

I kind of hope to get some input from non-British PPruners on this one.

Rgds SOS

The worst is easy:

Steak and Kidney pudding with rhubarb sauce.

It was in the No 2 mess at South Cerney. The food was all laid out and we queued to be served. To a goodly helping of S&K the cooks ladled out the rhubarb sauce.

Someone had mixed up the jugs.

The best?

Most of the meals in the aircrew feeder at Cottesmore.

I remember the grub at Oerland was pretty good, as indeed was the accomodation. Under floor heating and the biggest room I ever stayed in.

Most stand out memory for me was walking into the Airmen's Mess at Coningsby one day during the hot summer of '76. There was an outstanding display of salmon and various other cold goodies on a set of tables that the chefs had set aside, it was a really stunning sight and they had obviously pulled out the stops. I wrote a memo to the mess WO to pass on my thanks to his team. Oddly enough a couple of years later I courted his daughter.

Edit: just remembered Watton where I was billeted while on the Bucc Q course at Honington. In the morning the chef used to ask us what we wanted for dinner. There must have been all of 15 of us living in there. Quite excellent. Also Belize, we actually lived on the dispersals in portacabins, not as bad as it sounds as it was away from the pongo main camp and air conditioned. Each dispersal of around 8 guys had it's own cook. That was pretty good too.

Can't really say I had any bad food experiences in the RAF. Other than the appaling white box of despair on trooping flights.

The finest food I ever sampled was the "Full English" in the crew feeder at Akrotiri during GW1. It's hard to describe how good a taste of home gets to you when you haven't seen wife, kids or country for three months. The worst was also the crew feeder Akrotiri, on my way back from a route to Malaysia. Long story, so won't diverge, just to say, an 8 hour trip on nothing but water was a bugger for the front end. For comfort food, nothing can be better than "babies heads" on exercise. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you missed a treat.

Smudge

PS, just read "things" post. The "Buttyboxes" served up on Alberts were certainly repulsive to most pax. But I could usually clean up their leftovers !!!!!:ok:

Ah, Smuj. Babies heads. Outstanding. Good call.

The best - the first time I had fresh food in nearly 4 months after living off MREs while on ops. I had to go to a meeting in the ACHQ and had a couple of mates working there whilst I was up in Baghdad and they had the decency to take me out for dinner in downtown Doha. To eat something that actually had a shelf life and not a half life was heavenly and did wonders for morale.

The worst - at the end of that same tour when we had to fly out of Basrah. The Movers were totally unprepared and the only food that was available was a half frozen box of those god-awful sausage rolls. You know the ones - if you sent them off to a lab for testing the results would come back as unidentified. Well not only was there not any food, but no facilities for defrosting the sausage rolls other than turning the barco boilers up to full and propping the sausage rolls up around the outside in the vague hope that you wouldn't shatter a tooth when you bit in to it. They say war is hell, that was the damned worst moment of entire war for me, certainly the one that carried most risk.

The worst mess food I ever experienced was in the airmen's mess at RAF Wahn
back in the mid '50's. They once served up brussel sprouts at breakfast!
The Rock-apes went on strike once, and refused to enter the mess. Sh!it, fan etc. but it didn't improve much. Payday treat was Pork chop mit kartoffel and egg in a local bar, also the Malcolm Club did a roaring trade in egg and chips.
The best food was in the airmen's mess at RAF Tengah in the mid '60's. The Sgt's mess food was pretty average but when on night flying duties everyone ate in the airmens mess... it was a banquet!

Amen to that!

Did anyone ever experience fried eggs that tasted of iodine? In Sharjah you would have.

The best: Hobsonville in New Zealand. It didn't get the name Hotel Hobsonville for nothing.

The worst: Airmans mess in Wigram after an extended days flying, when we discovered the army cooks were doing a stint on the airforce base.

One one 'Mickey Finn' detachment to RAF Squittering in the late 1970's, the crews were brought home in a 52- seat coach which had been re-fitted with Elsans.

I've no idea what the food they ate tasted like (I was laughing about it from many miles away) but it was probably the worst food ever fed to V-Force Alert crews.

Just a second shot, does anyone remember the egg banjos in the NAAFI at Luqa, circa 1975 ? To die for.

Smudge

Grub
 

The worst thing I ever ate in the service was the breakfast bacon at Valley, it tasted like kippers, and the best was in Seletar airmens mess in the 60s, spoilt for choice and wonderful grub!
As for boxes of despair, I never had a problem clearing them up, nor the currys made up from the Rat Packs by the Gurkhas, but babies heads ................. drool!

I forgot to mention the egg banjos and Milo served at Pops tent at Kuching!

Feeling old going to bed! :}

Ah! The ubiquitous egg banjo. Sustained the troops in days of Empire.
So called because, having bitten into it, one adopted a banjo playing stance, wiping the yoke from one's shirt front.
Apologies for 'granny suck eggs' etc.

The absolute worst ever food from a military mess was the Army camp I stayed on for my intelligence course for Pre-NI training on the southeast coast... The name eludes me right now probably due to the trauma, Ashford?... They even managed specks of blackened potato in the mashed potato... We took a taxi to town rather than eat the utter crap being served by the ration assassins...

goudie,

Crikey, after 40 something years I've just discovered where the term "egg banjo" comes from. Thanks for that, I will die a wiser man.

Another "super food" I will never forget was the "goulash" served in "Pops" in the corner of heroes square, Limmasol circa 1973/5. After a night of Brandy cokes, sours, etc a visit was mandatory to "settle the innards" before transport back to Akronelli.

Smudge

Egg banjo
 

Thanks for that Goudie, it hadn't ocurred to me!

Best and Best
 

The food served in the Canadian mess at Minhad was always good, especially the 'holiday' buffet meals. Had to limit myself to only one Ben and Jerrys per day though. Fortunately there was enough time for fitness that I could get away with eating all the good food.

Best air force in-flight was undoubtedly at Waddington, new menus every 6 months and sandwiches made to order each flight.

Y_G

Best - omletes in CHOM during IOT - maybe because we were so hungry we would have eaten a dog.

Worst - everything that followed:E Only joking caterers, never had any complaints about the food.

Tom

Best, anything in the middle of the night during a stint in a sanger during an exercise. Babies heads, jock pies, that stew that every cook must learn at cook school. Loverly.
Worst; All the above at any other time!


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Worst: any evening meal served in the Combined Mess at RAAF Williams (Laverton), Victoria, Australia since the civilian catering took over. Absolute rubbish.

Best: evening meals cooked to order in the RAAF Glenbrook OM. Amazing what a bit of care and consideration can produce!

DF

best view, too!

:ok:

The worst was a "Burrito de Luxe" at the Base Cafe, Nellis prior to a Red Flag sortie in 1979 - don't remember much about the trip.

The best was a barracuda steak for dinner in the mess at Masirah in 1973, caught locally that afternoon.

Anyone remember the Friday Nepalese curry in HMS Tamar in Hong Kong ???

Best:

A mutton hangi overseen by a Fijian hooligan. It's technically a Maori cooking technique but I think it's used across the South Pacific. Ideal way to enjoy E and E instruction.

The meals in Lashkar Gah were excellent, given the conditions under which they were produced.

The worst: the steak that I had recently at RAF Odiham, so tough that it was genuinely inedible.

Worst - Any of the c**p ISS serve up under this abortion of a contract they call pay as you dine.

Best - the food in the mess at Leuchars when I first arrived when it was full RAF catering. You could literally ask for anything you liked.

Best: Compo sausages anywhere.

Worst: RAF Northolt OM. At dinner requested the lamb chops from the menu. Presented with a plate with the smallest chop ever seen (lamb must have been only hours old!) and that was it!!! From waiter "Oh, did you want a vegetable with it?"

All airmens messes,

Best:- Very close call between Kinloss and Brawdy, but Brawdy had a slight edge. Strangely enough the WO i/c the Kinloss mess had been the Flt Sgt in the mess at Brawdy when I was there. Unfortunately his name eludes me but he and his troops kept my stomach happy for many years.

Worst:- Fulton mess at Cosford. Huge queues, crap food and Discips lurking outside trying to ping people for anything they could.

Best... the flying rations on the E-3D provided by Waddington in-flight during the 1990s. Superb quality and very tasty!

Worst... the flying rations on the E-3D provided by the Italian caterers during the detachments to Aviano during the 1990s. (The contract was terminated after a hygene check following several complaints).

The BEST: Curry with 2/2GR at MPA/RAF Mount Pleasant

Nearly as good: Curry lunch every Wednesday at Worthy Down (well it had been and RAF, and RN, base in the past)

We seem to have missed RAF Akronelli !!

Always, a great feast whenever the chefs did the evening barbeque outside: squeaky cheese, shish, liver, and the pork chop hewn from a pig related to the woolley mamouth. And washed down with brandy sour and Keo (and that lovely Cypriot red "wine" kokkinelli). Loverly.

Best
After a long day setting up Kingsfield airstrip Army Captain dispatched his driver for a bag of egg banjoes for us.
On Detatchment to RAF Hendon the Airmens Mess was superb.
Worst
RAF Swinderby or Sennybridge Barracks, eat out of mess tins then wash in single sink full of grease and scum.

Worst - Officers' Mess White Waltham 1969-73 civvie catering....:yuk:

Best - Officers' Mess RAF Thorney Island 1970. Last of the 'old' RAF, with the most magnificent luncheon I've ever seen.

Closely followed by fillet steak at the Officers' Mess RAFU Goose Bay when we night stopped with the AOC. But this was before the 'duty free' saga.....:oh:

Could it be St Martin's Plain at Folkestone? Spent two days there, tried to eat the unidentified substance that was offered on arrival, then went to the nearby Tesco to get something edible for the rest of my stay.

Best

Bruggen. Omelette bar and barbecue and Q

Babies heads, Egg Banjos, compo sausage full English on exercise.

Brize, the sliced lamb kept in a hot like water tray

VC 10 Dulles burgers and meal served on return flight after engine change. Two pax (us) picked out own menu which was provided and even had beer.... Shhh :)


Worst

Odiham free fly eggs on ham salad, In fact most of the stuff they served, the only decent meal they tended to serve was the Christmas Dinner and most of that appeared to end up thrown in the direction of the Staish. Felt sorry for the cooks that had put a lot of time and effort into getting one meal a year right to see it thrown.
Though oddly enough stick them in a field kitchen and they were superb.

St Athans tea urn that was laced with laxative.


Worst ever I can remember a Steak and kidney pudding served with Chocolate sauce and a sponge cake served with Gravy, I kid you not, they couldn't even tell the difference themselves.

..

After the food, that was served up in the Scampton airmen's mess in the late '50's, it was an amazing experience to eat in the mess at Goose Bay... three eggs on steak for breakfast, fresh milk and orange juice. I'd never seen so much excellent food on offer on the servery.

Best:
RAF Aldergrove OM
Yeovilton Wardroom Tuesday(?) curry lunch.

Winner: anything produced by MCSU at Prilep in Macedonia in 99. Showed what can be done even on a field kitchen if you take a bit of pride in your work.

Worst:

Swinderby OM
Henlow OM under PAYD

Winner: the cookhouse in the SH site in Basra 04. Unmitigated slop. Spaghetti, on the servery, in its cooking water, for an hour, "to keep it warm Sir". "Coronation chicken" rolls for lunch: one slice of processed chicken slice in a dry stale bun with a dollop of yellowy mayo. Delicious. The Pizza Hut van and the kebab hut at the main site did a roaring trade.

You mean the pre-digested frozen turds?

Absolutely agree with Bill4a (Post #11) the best was the Airman's Mess at West Camp, RAF Seletar - but only West Camp, the East Camp Mess didn't quite match-up. Still think of it often, an equivalent spread at a restaurant today would cost a fortune.

One of the best: square sausages (out of can), baked beans and bread toasted over a campfire on one of our regular bundo bashing trips out of RAF Sharjah in '66. Also breakfast in the mess at RAF Finningley after a night on QRA/ORP. The catering guys would really turn it on for us. They would serve us a FULL English breakfast in every meaning of the words, there was nothing lacking.

Best fish !
 

The best traditional British fish & chips I have ever eaten ( and I have amassed considerable data base ) was served at RAF Larrbruch by the field kitchen during one of the flying club rally's.

The quality of the fish was of the very finest order !