United Airlines Is Taking In-Flight Dining to New Heights With Netflix’s Chef’s Table

Forget everything you thought you knew about airplane food. United Airlines is giving dining at 35,000 feet a serious upgrade, teaming up with Chef’s Table , the brand behind Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning culinary series, to bring dishes from some of the world’s most celebrated chefs into the skies.

The collaboration, which launched aboard select long-haul United Polaris international business class flights on August 1, brings together 11 acclaimed chefs from four continents, with menus inspired by United’s seven U.S. hubs and three major international destinations: London, Tokyo and São Paulo.

And rather than simply attaching a famous chef’s name to one entrée, United has gone considerably further. Each chef has created a complete dining experience featuring an appetizer, salad and entrée designed specifically to work in the unique environment of an aircraft cabin.

For Aaron McMillan, United’s Managing Director of Hospitality Programs, the partnership represents the latest step in a much bigger effort to rethink what passengers eat and drink in the air. With travelers increasingly viewing the onboard experience as an important part of the journey rather than simply the time spent getting from one destination to another, United has been putting greater emphasis on the details that can make a flight feel more considered, and food and beverage has become a significant part of that equation.

“Over the past three years, I’ll say we’ve been continuing to invest in our food and beverage program on board,” McMillan tells OK! exclusively. “It’s an important part of the experience. We know it really matters to customers.”

That approach is about more than simply upgrading a meal in the airline’s most premium cabin. Instead, McMillan says United has been looking at its onboard food and beverage offering as a whole, with improvements designed to reach passengers across different cabins and routes. It’s part of a broader push to make what lands on the tray feel like a meaningful element of the United experience rather than an afterthought.

“This has been what we would say is a nose-to-tail initiative,” he explains. “We’re making investments across the experience, not only in the international business class cabin, but also premium economy and economy and domestic as well.”

It’s against that backdrop that the Chef’s Table partnership takes shape: a more ambitious extension of an investment United says has already been underway for several years, and one designed to show just how much more the traditional airline meal can become.

For Chef’s Table, United tapped chefs connected to some of the biggest culinary cities on its network.

The impressive lineup includes Nancy Silverton of Los Angeles’ Osteria Mozza; Fariyal Abdullahi of New York’s Hav & Mar; Chicago chef Jenner Tomaska; Houston’s Justin Yu; Denver’s Penelope Wong; San Francisco’s David Barzelay; Washington, D.C.’s Isabel Coss and Matt Conroy; London’s Tomos Parry; Tokyo-based Tashi Gyamtso; and Brazil’s Manu Buffara.

Their dishes are equally ambitious.

Passengers departing Los Angeles can experience Silverton’s menu, which begins with burrata, braised leeks, mustard vinaigrette and breadcrumbs, followed by shaved Brussels sprouts with mint, almonds and pecorino Romano and beef brasato with garlic mashed potatoes, salsa verde and horseradish gremolata.

“When it comes to Chef’s Table specifically, we thought this was a great opportunity for us to partner with Chef’s Table as an organization to help curate chef talent that we can work with to create a unique dining experience on board that you can’t get anywhere else,” McMillan says.

“And we wanted to go beyond just a single entrée, for example, that a chef has designed. We’ve created an entire dining experience.”

For Chef Nancy Silverton, translating restaurant-quality cooking into something that still works miles above the ground was part of the attraction.

“I’ve done food for airlines before, and so I really was excited about the challenge because that’s really what it is — it’s a challenge,” Silverton tells OK! exclusively. “Not all food translates into going up in the air.”

The James Beard Award-winning chef says selecting the right dishes was key.

“I think it really is a matter of choosing wisely,” she explains. “I’m very happy with our United Chef’s Table menu because I think we have done that. I think we’ve chosen really wisely.”

And Silverton believes collaborations like this reflect travelers’ growing desire for experiences that feel special rather than simply functional.

“In today’s world… there are so many opportunities and people are looking so much for different experiences that people can have in what they do, whether it’s travel or whether it’s any life experiences,” she says.

For Silverton, it’s also a chance to introduce her cooking to passengers who may never have stepped inside one of her restaurants.

“Number one, that’s exposure — my food reaching more of a wider audience,” she tells OK! “But secondly, I think that it’s nice to let the guests know that, yeah, it is possible to get a good meal on the plane.”

The collaboration doesn’t end when the meal tray is cleared.

United and Chef’s Table have also created exclusive inflight entertainment centered around the chefs and the process of developing food for the skies, including individual chef profiles and longer-form Chef’s Table programming.

“There are five-to-six-minute videos on each of the chefs, like a little bit of a profile,” McMillan tells OK!, adding that passengers can also watch longer Chef’s Table content that gives them “a little peek behind the curtain” at how the collaboration came together.

It means travelers can potentially eat a dish inspired by one of the world’s leading chefs while simultaneously discovering the story behind the person who created it , turning the traditionally forgettable airline meal into part of the travel experience itself.

And Silverton believes the project proves just how far inflight dining has come.

“It’s possible to make something not only look appealing, but taste appealing,” she says. “It’s pretty amazing what we can get done on an airplane these days.”

For travelers eager to taste the collaboration for themselves, the first Chef’s Table menus are being served aboard select United Polaris international business class flights from August 1 through September 2026.

A new lineup of dishes from the same 11 chefs will debut in October, with the menus continuing to rotate seasonally into 2027.

With fresh menus already planned into 2027, United and Chef’s Table are betting that for premium travelers, the journey can begin with the first course — long before the United plane ever reaches its destination.