Air France has introduced new long-haul menus from Paris developed by six French chefs and pastry chefs, extending the airline’s use of restaurant names across La Première, Business and Premium.
The menus entered service October 1 and will rotate over the coming months. The new culinary lineup brings together Arnaud Lallement and Claire Heitzler in La Première; Mathieu Viannay, François Adamski and Nina Métayer in Business; and Frédéric Simonin in Premium.
Rather than applying one chef’s work uniformly across the aircraft, Air France has divided responsibility by cabin, meal type and course. The program covers starters and main dishes, desserts, and, on qualifying morning flights, Business-class breakfasts and brunches.
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More Than 30 Lallement Dishes for La Première
Three-Michelin-starred Arnaud Lallement has created more than 30 La Première starters and main courses with Servair’s Culinary Studio. The collection covers both the first and second meal services and will be deployed seasonally rather than appearing as a single fixed menu.
The selection includes vegetarian dishes alongside fish, poultry and red meat. Among the examples disclosed by Air France are lobster poached in court-bouillon with potatoes and paprika sauce, and stewed Swiss chard with chickpeas and a yellow wine sauce.
Lallement runs L’Assiette Champenoise in Reims and has worked with Air France previously. His continued presence gives the airline continuity at the top of the cabin hierarchy while substantially expanding the number of dishes attached to his name.
Claire Heitzler is responsible for La Première desserts. Four will be introduced over the coming months, including Racine, combining Caribbean dark chocolate mousse with Madagascar vanilla cream, and Planifolia, built entirely around Bourbon vanilla.
Heitzler replaces Angelo Musa in the pairing announced for the cabin in June 2025. At that time, Lallement handled savory courses while Musa supplied the pastry program. Air France’s previous menu cycle also featured Régis Marcon in Business and Simonin in Premium.
Business Program Extends to the Second Service
Mathieu Viannay, chef of the two-Michelin-starred La Mère Brazier in Lyon, takes over the principal Business-class menu. He has developed more than 20 dishes that Air France will introduce progressively, with hot selections available during both the first and second services.
Examples include creamy fregola with Mimolette, arugula, roasted butternut squash and preserved lemon. Another dish pairs glazed salmon with lemon-soy butter and green Puy lentils. The combination of more than 20 recipes and seasonal rotation gives the airline room to vary its offering across destinations and operating periods without abandoning a recognizable French framework.
François Adamski, Servair’s corporate chef and a winner of both the Bocuse d’Or and Meilleur Ouvrier de France distinctions, has created the Business breakfast and brunch dishes. His menu applies to flights scheduled to depart Paris no later than 9:30 a.m.
The morning selections include Chimay-style stuffed eggs with truffle béchamel and mushroom polenta, along with a buckwheat galette filled with mushrooms and spinach and served with Mornay sauce and toasted hazelnuts. Assigning breakfast to a separate chef makes that service a defined part of the premium product rather than an adaptation of the main lunch and dinner menu.
Nina Métayer continues as the Business pastry chef. Her latest desserts include a pear-and-chocolate composition called Instant poire-chocolat and Parenthèse mandarine-amande, combining mandarin and almond.
Air France will continue allowing Business passengers to select their hot meal up to 24 hours before departure. The system gives customers a better chance of receiving their preferred choice while helping catering teams load meals against known demand.
Two Hot Choices in Premium
Frédéric Simonin remains responsible for the Premium cabin, where passengers departing Paris can choose between two hot dishes. One of the two choices will be vegetarian, and the menu will be changed regularly.
The initial examples include conchiglie with chanterelle mushrooms and herb cream, and shrimp with tomato and squid-ink rice. Simonin has worked with Air France’s Premium program since 2023, making his role the most continuous element of the latest menu revision.
Across Business and La Première, Air France says meat, poultry, dairy products and eggs are sourced from France. Fish comes from French fisheries or sources classified by the airline as sustainable, while a vegetarian option is provided systematically.
Dining Supports the Broader Premium Investment
The menu change arrives as Air France continues to invest in its highest-end long-haul products. La Première is offered on selected Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, the type on which the airline is deploying its latest four-suite first-class cabin.
Each new La Première suite occupies nearly 3.5 square meters and combines a separate seat with a chaise longue that converts into a two-meter bed. The suite extends across five windows. That low-density installation makes the dining program especially visible: with only four La Première passengers on an equipped aircraft, the service is positioned closer to individually paced restaurant dining than high-volume cabin catering.
The wider menu nevertheless matters beyond the four-seat cabin. Business supplies most of the premium capacity on Air France’s long-haul fleet, while Premium has become an increasingly important bridge between the airline’s lie-flat product and Economy. The six-chef structure allows Air France to attach a distinct culinary identity to each of those customer groups without treating every premium cabin as a reduced version of La Première.
Bottom Line
Air France’s latest menus show that the airline is treating food as a layered product rather than a single headline-chef exercise. Lallement provides continuity in La Première, but the addition of Heitzler and the division of Business among savory, morning and pastry specialists create clearer ownership of each part of the service.
Business passengers stand to see the broadest operational change. More than 20 Viannay dishes, hot food during the second service and a dedicated Adamski breakfast program give Air France more flexibility on flights of different lengths and departure times. Meal preselection also links the culinary investment to a practical loading system rather than relying only on branding.
The next measure will be consistency as the dishes move through seasonal rotations and are served across a large long-haul operation. Air France is pairing the menus with major spending on cabins, particularly the Boeing 777-300ER La Première fleet. Maintaining the intended standard outside the small first-class cabin will determine whether the six-chef program becomes a network-wide product improvement or remains most convincing at the front of the aircraft.
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