World’s Largest Airline Kitchen - Emirates Flight Catering

I visited the world’s largest airline kitchen - Emirates Flight Catering. On an average day, the kitchen produced 225,000 meals and over 1 billion meals since its inception. Join me for the eye-opening behind the scenes tour.

My tour started at the end of an A380 flight, over 100 used trollies, leftover food, and dirty items arrived at Emirates Flight Catering for offloading and cleaning. On average, over 3 million items are being cleaned every day by mega washing machines. The cleaned trolley and item are then board on a “monorail” to travel to the other side of the building for packing.

The next stop is the hot food kitchen. Emirates has a separate kitchen section for Western food, Asian food, Arabic food and Indian food. Executive chef James Griffith showed me around each section. After the food is cooked, they go into chillers for 4 hours before arriving at portioning and packaging for flight. I witnessed the cooking by specification and weighting of food to ensure consistency.

At the tray build-up area, new trays and portioned food were then loaded onto the cleaned trolley. All catering were then kept chilled before being taken by high loader truck into the airplane for passengers.

Last, I visited World’s largest vertical farm, Bustanica which produces fresh lettuce for Emirates Flight Kitchen from farm to fork in just 14 hours! The vegetables were grown sustainably without using soil and fertilizer.

[OtakuAviators]

It shows how strict Emirates' catering standards are that they immediately took out the clean trays that Sam touched with his hands. Another great video Sam, very informative and impressive!

[lun_th]

I love the pride in the gentleman who is showing you around. THAT is someone who loves what he does. THAT is the dude i want in charge of making my food <3

[naveenjonadxb]

Me and my Husband Worked here in this Amazing Company for almost 3 years!🥳 I’m so happy to see Sir Bassam, Chef James and Sir Robert..🤗😊🥰 Every department is very important and organized! You guys can’t imagine the Hardwork and passion every Employees put into every Tray..❤
Whenever I’m in the flight, I wish I could tell to everyone “Hey don’t waste the food” hey! Finish your Food, Haha!🤗😁
Great Video Sam! Love from Naveen and Jona😍

[timmotel]

I was in heaven the whole video. I'm 71 years old and my father worked at American Airlines and British Airways from my birth onward. I've always loved airline food, always. I started flying in DC-6 prop planes through the present day aircraft. Still love eating in flight. Thanks. You make the best videos and share the most fun.

[sajidulahad]

The amount of pressure to be in charge of this kitchen would be insane.

[geofferyjensen]

That was one of the best videos you’ve done Sam. Very different from you flying and you get to see behind the scenes on what it takes just to get food to the aircraft. Great job!

[marting.]

Incredibly impressive and amazing to see how a company like Emirates manages flight catering of this sheer immense scale. Great video Sam.

[affirmationstoday]

What a massive industry, and this is just one kitchen of many around the world. Not so long ago all the washing up would of all been done by hand and no recycling. Incredible. Thank you

[chowroger]

For economy class, Emirates does provide the best catering service among all the airlines around the world! And the scale they handle every day is truly amazing!

[harsharao]

Wow!, amount of work goes into keep us fed 36000 feet In the air is simply uncomparably hard job. Thanks Sam for showing us the behind the scenes work. Kudos to all those workers and chefs and everyone who keeps our stomachs full during our flights.

[lastnamefirstname]

The ground staff is never hungry on these. I used to be an ac engineer for a gulf carrier, i picked up 10kgs in 2 years. So much good food untouched, incredible waste. Unopened steaks, fish, all 1 st class meals. I was eating 5-6 full 1st class courses a shift

[alexmcwhirter]

Amazing how the catering has grown. When I first flew through DXB in 1973 (refuelling and catering stop on BritishAirtours charter flight B707 LGW-BKK) any serious catering was done by a top local hotel downtown ! Back then there were not many long-haul flight movements and many other carriers en route to Asia would stop in BAH.

[supericeman]

All the hard work and delicate operations that goes into running Emirates into a world class airline thanks for sharing Sam a bit of that EK magic!

[veepee]

Mr Chui, of all you videos you’ve ever put out here. This one I love. It’s amazing to see what goes into preparing airplane food and the sanitation process of making so sure how clean the utensils and plates are. That’s so important to me. Thank you so much for the insight. And I do love all of your content. While I will never go to all those beautiful place you go to. It’s great to see everything through your eyes. Thank you. Much love and respect from Paterson NJ

[MehulM]

Here we are having those meals on our flights while flying across the world, but what we don’t know is that the hygienic process it goes through to get you that tasty meal.

The scale of these operations is insane. Thanks for taking us behind the scenes to see what it takes to get you those meals on your flight.

[AngryAsian]

I flew on both Turkish Airways and Qatar Airways a couple months ago, and the food and service of the Middle Eastern airways is amazing! My mind was blown at both their lounges as well, the amount of fresh food at Turkish Airlines is mind blowing. Made me realize just how terrible US flights are

[josephnivin]

I had always wondered about how these kitchens deliver so precise to all flights… awesome to visualise them now Sam 👏🏾👏🏾

[annelizebatel]

This is impressive!! Hope those constant complainers see how much effort is going into this! Thanks to all the people preparing all the food!

[wagnerpinheiro]

Impressive. Thanks Sam for this precious documentary. All of us aviation fans are grateful for the opportunity to learn about this unimaginable aviation backstage. 👏👏👏👏

[mikeinfortcollinslynn]

Just incredible what Emirates does to ensure customer satisfaction with wonderful food. 220, 000 meals per day....unbelievable. Thanks for the inside look at the kitchen Sam!