T
here’s only one truly glamorous way to dine this summer: in a hot-air balloon. Take a scroll through your Instagram feed and you’re almost guaranteed to come across at least one photo of a spectacular-looking dining pop-up featuring a fleet of grounded hot-air balloons. The chicest one is at Beaverbrook hotel in Surrey, which has been running for five years, while more whimsical fun can be had at the Grove in Hertfordshire, where their Feast on Cloud 9 pop-up has a retro fairground theme. But if you really want to take things to the next level, you need to get yourself to the Netherlands.
There, the acclaimed Dutch chef Angélique Schmeinck takes to the skies with what is claimed to be the world’s first hot-air balloon restaurant, CuliAir Skydining, which serves a three-course meal over an hour and a half while guests drift above the clouds. The flights take place across the Netherlands, with the exact locations decided based on the weather (the middle and eastern areas in Holland tend to have the best flight conditions during the ballooning season, which runs from May until the end of September).
Schmeinck — who spent 12 years cooking at the Michelin-starred De Kromme Dissel in Heelsum — launched CuliAir in 2003 as part of a course she was taking on creative thinking. “For my final project, I had to come up with something that looked impossible,” she says. “For some reason a hot-air balloon came to mind and I realised that it’s basically just a huge hot-air oven. I wondered, ‘What would happen if you put a nice fish or a good chicken in there?’ I knew I had to try it out for myself.” She called a local ballooning company and explained her idea. “Most people thought I was crazy, but I was lucky that this particular pilot loved good food, so he was intrigued by the idea. I’d never been in a balloon before but it was the most wonderful experience of my life. I knew it was too special not to just go for it.”
