The Local Stars programme highlights unique Portuguese ingredients on the airline’s business class menu every two months.

Madeira and, more specifically, its sugarcane honey will be the star of TAP‘s business class long-haul flight menu during the months of September and October.

Launched at the beginning of this year, the Local Stars project, a partnership between TAP and The Art of Tasting Portugal (TAOTP), promotes a different region of Portugal and its local ingredients, emphasising a regional product worked by a Portuguese chef equally linked to the region. The menu, available in Business Class on all of the airline’s long-haul flights, always consists of a starter, main course and dessert, which change every two months to cover the entire country and respect the seasonality of the ingredients as much as possible.

This October and November, Funchal-based chef Júlio Pereira will showcase Madeira’s ingredients and gastronomy to position the archipelago as an unmissable gastronomic destination in Portugal. The Madeira-inspired menu includes a starter – smoked trout, fennel and passion fruit – a main course – beef mendinha, corn and sugarcane honey from Madeira – and a dessert – banana, cream cheese and sugarcane honey cake.

“TAP is on a mission to bring the best of Portuguese gastronomy to the world. We pursue this partnership with The Art of Tasting Portugal, this time revealing the best flavours of the Madeira archipelago with an exclusive menu by Chef Júlio Pereira, highlighting, among other typical products of this region, the Mel-de-Cana (sugarcane honey) as a star product”, says Catarina Indio, Head of Product of the Customer Engagement area at TAP Air Portugal.

“We want to promote the national territory, adding value by commercialising gastronomic experiences and activities with local products and chefs, boosting tourism and the local economy. The signature menus, along with the content broadcast on board, and all the experiences in the territory allow those who visit us to take the regions back with them because whoever knows the country in this sensorial and emotional context and comes into contact with experiences like these, keeps Portugal in their hearts”, says Adriana Fournier, founder of The Art of Tasting Portugal.

“It is with great pride and enthusiasm that I am part of the Local Stars initiative, which allows the products and essence of Madeira to travel around the world, sharing our country and our enormous cultural and gastronomic heritage. I have always had a great passion for our emblematic sugarcane honey, produced exclusively on the island and which has been part of the Madeiran community and economy for several centuries. Hence, it made perfect sense to choose it as the star of this menu”, says chef Júlio Pereira, adding that “Madeira is, and has been doing, very interesting evolutionary work towards enhancing the archipelago and its quality, and this project strengthens the path we have been taking over the years”.