At this point, you could argue Chef Garima Arora has nothing left to prove. Two Michelin stars, a restaurant that’s quietly redefining what Indian fine dining can look like. And now, an in-flight menu that wants you to care about your food somewhere over the Arabian Sea.
Starting November 15, passengers flying Qatar Airways Business Class from Doha to India will eat like Garima cooks: with intention, restraint, and the occasional nod to her grandmother. The partnership unfolds in four menu “cycles,” each one centered on a different facet of Indian cooking. The first: Entirely vegetarian and built around the logic of Ayurveda.
There’s a chaat that behaves the way Garima’s food usually does: playful at first, but quietly precise. A millet khichdi that travels straight from her grandmother’s kitchen notebook to a linen-lined tray table. It’s Sattvik, light, and served with house pickles and shorba.
And then there’s dessert: a riff on the most democratic ritual in India: chai and a Parle-G. Garima calls it The Dunker. We’re talking masala-chai mousse, crisp biscuit, raspberries stuffed with candied ginger. Combine that with the joy of dunking, just… pressurised-cabin edition.
“No Indian meal is complete without chai,” she says, which might sound sentimental until you taste what she’s done with it. Somehow, the world’s most familiar biscuit ends the world’s most exclusive meal.
For Qatar Airways, it’s a flex. Another attempt to turn luxury air travel into something with a point of view. For Garima, it’s proof that Indian vegetarian food can be meditative, global, and deeply personal, even when served at cruising altitude.
The next phase of the collaboration will expand to routes from Doha to the U.S. Until then, passengers to India get first dibs on a dessert that might finally make you look forward to airplane food.