TASMANIAN Cape Grim Beef is now being served to Qantas first-class passengers in a recipe prepared by influential chef Neil Perry.
It is the first time the premium meat has been served on-board an aircraft and the partnership is the result of Perry’s long love affair with the product from the state’s fertile North-West Coast.
The dish, named after Perry’s award-winning restaurant, is described as “Rockpool Bar & Grill style Cape Grim beef fillet with Jerusalem artichoke gratin, garlic mushrooms, sugar snaps and horseradish relish”.
Peter Greenham, managing director of Greenham Tasmania, which owns Cape Grim, said Perry had stocked their beef for about eight years now.
“We do weekly orders to all five or six of his restaurants,” he said.
“It’s great to have our beef onboard Qantas, with it being the national airline and their choices to stock quality products.”
The dish will be served on A380 aircraft which operate from Sydney and Melbourne to London, Dubai, Los Angeles, Dallas and Hong Kong.
Mr Greenham said the introduction of the dish was about Qantas’s new Producer to Plane program and commitment to sustainable farming and ethical practices.
Perry began working with Mr Greenham to introduce 36-day aged beef when he opened the first Rockpool Bar and Grill in 2007.
Perry has worked with Qantas for 18 years, designing first and business in-flight and First Lounge menus.
Qantas buys from more than 1500 Australian providers of food, beverages, wines, helping many small Australian companies grow, develop and find new markets.
Cape Grim beef, from Greenham Tasmania’s meat-processing plant at Smithton, will also feature on March 18 in Qantas’s epiQure Producer to Plane film and food events.
In yet another culinary coup, Mr Greenham said Cape Grim Beef would soon be available in Canada.
“Some may think they have enough of their own product to satisfy demand,” he said.
“But for a country that is blanketed in snow much of the year, grass-fed beef is tough to produce.
“Tassie can get cold but not like that.”
By Emma Hope, Mercury
