Plane Food Cafe

There is something uniquely wonderful about Plane Food Café that makes it a perfect fit for the Fringe. You sit in a mocked-up aircraft interior for 30 minutes, shown a brief video and fed an authentic airline meal. All for just six quid, and that includes a glass of wine if you fancy it. It’s actually the sort of thing that you could add to your schedule as your lunch break rather than getting fleeced on the Mile for soggy chips and a can of Coke.

The video presentation gets your appetite going by describing Snarge – which is the bits lefts over from bird-strike; and – for those unfamiliar with that term – bird-strike is what happens when an animal meets its end in collision with an aircraft. Normally ingested through the engines, which – we are informed – are tested to withstand such events. This is nothing if not educational, although you might want to go for the veggie option after watching the film.

Our captain, Richard, and his chief stewardess Trisha keep the passengers entertained with light-hearted banter throughout, pointing out that pressurised cabins make normal meals taste bland, so extra flavour is added to in-flight cuisine. Therefore, eating plane food on the ground (and in this case, below ground as we are in the basement kitchen of the New Town Theatre), must taste terrific.

Well, it’s not quite terrific; but the Veggie Lasagne that had apparently been collected fresh from Dundee Airport that very morning tasted perfectly edible. And for six quid with drinks and a quite unique experience thrown in, I wasn’t complaining one bit.