Air New Zealand Lounge Melbourne Food and Nutrition Review

It’s been quite a while since I have set foot in an Air New Zealand Lounge in Australia (actually the last time in an Air New Zealand Lounge was a few years ago in Auckland). So when I was travelling recently on Singapore Airlines in business class I was excited to visit the Air New Zealand Lounge Melbourne since they are both in Star Alliance. And I liked what I saw! A fairly large and open lounge with a decent buffet offering some nutritious dishes.

What’s healthy?

• There were four colourful salads available at the time of my visit and I just loved the variety. There was a garden salad which is a great accompaniment to any dish you choose to have in the lounge. There was also a broccoli salad which was delicious and also adds quite a nutritious punch to your meals. Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable and it is recommended we have cruciferous vegetables daily. This salad also had cauliflower in it – if you are prone to bloating you might like to avoid having too much cauliflower before a flight. And finally there were two salads with plant based protein (one with tofu and one with chickpeas). You could also have these as a meal on their own – a great balance of vegetables and protein. By the way the kale in the chickpea salad had a beautiful crunch to it – I am not really a kale fan but this was delicious. A great example of why you should always try a salad – never assume you won’t like it as they might surprise you.

• Since I was on an early evening flight (and was in business so had a couple of courses coming my way) it was great to see there were some nutritious snacks available. There were a brie and cheddar cheese available, along with dried apricots, pickled vegetables, olives and char grilled capsicum.

• The roasted potato dish amused me – it was labelled potato and broccoli however there was only 1 piece of broccoli in the whole dish. Not sure if someone came along and picked out all the broccoli? Or there just wasn’t much broccoli in the dish???? Either way these roasted potatoes were really tasty – but just stick with no more than 1/4 of your plate potatoes since you will most likely be sitting for a while on a plane. And next time more broccoli please!
  
• It was great to see the Teriyaki chicken dish had mostly chicken and vegetables with a small amount of sauce (enough for flavour and moisture). This is in contrast to some lounges where hot dishes like this can be mostly sauce and you have to go fishing to find any meat or vegetables.

• There was a hot vegetable dish available too – a mushroom and eggplant stew. This was had more sauce than the teriyaki (as to be expected with a stew). Just be careful when you take a spoonful to make sure you get a heap of vegetables in it and not just a spoon of sauce.

Not so great. Caution.

• There were a range of cakes, slices and muffins available. At first glance the muffins are labelled sweet potato, spinach and feta which sound pretty healthy and nutritious. However when I tried one they didn’t seem to contain a whole lot of vegetables (see image below). There wasb;t much spinach or sweet potato that I could see, and even if the sweet potato was blended into the flour it didn’t taste overly like sweet potato – to me it tasted very much like a cake (not very savoury). If you like muffins be mindful that just because a label sounds nutritious doesn’t mean it is packed with nutritious ingredients.

Last word from a food and nutrition perspective for the Air New Zealand Lounge Melbourne

The Air New Zealand Lounge Melbourne is not a bad lounge. It is much larger than I thought it was going to be and felt quite open thanks to the windows looking out onto the tarmac. There was a fairly good selection of food with plenty of cold buffet options – you know I especially loved the variety of salads. However I felt they could do with another hot meal option on the buffet. There were only buffet foods, no a la carte dishes available. This is not a bad option if the Singapore Airlines lounge is busy (being a small lounge in Melbourne it can get crowded).

NOTE: All pictures of the Air New Zealand Melbourne Lounge are my own and I review a lounge from just the foods I see during my visit. There may be different options available at other times.