So right after we took off from San Francisco, it was time for lunch. The lunch in the La Premiere cabin of the Air France A380 is five courses. I first started with some canapes: grilled pineapple and salmon with caviar; a date with goat cheese - or chèvre - and dried chorizo; and some sort of eggplant wrap with hummus inside.

After assessing this, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “oh no! I’m in France!” And we hadn’t even landed.

I say that with some alarm because the French, for all their creativity, sometimes get too creative. When, if ever, do salmon and pineapple go together? Or a date, goat cheese and dried chorizo? The last time I was in France, we had several meals where the chef had practically gone conceptual, like what you’d see in a modern art museum. Would you want to eat something by Jackson Pollock? Or Robert Raushenberg? The food was interesting to look at, and a nice to thing to consider, but it doesn’t taste good.

That is how I felt about these canapes. I pushed them aside, sipped my Krug and perused the menu.

As is de rigeur in the upper classes, they provide a menu and actual choices for what you get to eat. In La Premiere, after the appetizers, there was the parsnip soup, which the menu says has “bresaola julienne.” Once again, “oh no! I’m in France!” What in the heck is breseaola? And why is it julienned? I would google it but the Air France A380 doesn’t have wifi. Another sip of Krug is taken.

Choices of entrees include:

“Prime Cut” filet of beef with pepper sauce. Pomme Dauphine potato puffs, pan fried mushrooms and braised romaine.

Calf sweetbread with truffle sauce, sautéed oyster mushrooms and spinach.

Scallops and shrimp with a ginger and sesame sauce and rice flavored with bamboo and bok choy.

Ravioli with white truffle, confit tomato and zucchini.

Can you imagine? Somewhere in the galley, they have four different entrees prepared for the nine La Premiere passengers.

I chose the filet, mainly because I thought it would be a safe bet and sort of by process of elimination. Calf sweetbreads? I don’t think a cow thymus is going to set well in a pressurized cabin. Ravioli? That’s been microwaved? No thanks. Scallops and shrimp? Gives me a bad feeling.

After I ordered came the caviar service, of which there are few things more pleasurable. She refilled my glass of Krug and set before me a small plate with a lemon wrapped in fine yellow cheese cloth, a dollop of creme fraiche, 2 blinis, a little mound of crushed hard boiled egg and a jar filled with an eighth of an ounce of caviar.

I don’t know what it is about the combination of caviar and champagne. Caviar is Russian, champagne, French, but somehow the fruits of the vineyards around Rheims are made to pair with the eggs of a fish from the Caspian Sea. They even served it with a little plastic caviar spoon, as caviar is not supposed to touch metal, because a stainless steel spoon would impart an undesirable metallic flavor.

Slathering the blinis with creme fraiche, plopping on top the caviar, sprinkling the hard boiled egg and squirting with lemon, it was consumed. And washed down with champagne.

The next course was the parsnip soup, but as this is France, I had to choose the wine. Something white, of course. And the list, which was printed separately from the menu, gave me several options. Should I choose the rosé from Tavel? Or the chablis? At this point I was beginning to feel a bit sheepish about being in first class and getting all this attention and just pointed at one of them. It was 2015 Louis Jadot Chardonnay “Les Combottes,” something, I see on Wine Searcher, now that I am home, is from Cote de Beane - Burgundy - and can be had for $26 per bottle.

The parsnip soup was beautiful, heavy in cream, which is necessary because parsnips don’t taste like much. And the chardonnay was perfect with it. There was a small flower of oregano in the center. I’ve since googled bresaola: it’s a type of salted beef. Unfortunately it was nowhere to be found with the soup.

Next it was time to choose the wine that I would have with my entree. There were two options, something from Cote-Rotie, a region I had heard of but knew nothing about, and something from St. Emilion, which I did. St. Emilion is one of the most famous villages in Bordeaux, boasting among others, Cheval Blanc. I chose 2012 Château Canon. Nothing like something with a little bottle age when you’re at 43,000 feet.

She poured a tasted of the Chateau Canon for me to make sure it was good, as they do. I didn’t bother really tasting it, as I would never have the audacity to make her go open another bottle. Would they even have another bottle? I sipped, put the glass down and smiled.

And this is where something strange happened, that made me profoundly uncomfortable, but really puts a fine point on why we love and hate the French. When she went to pour the full glass of wine, she missed the glass and spilled some on the white table cloth. I immediately told her not to worry about it, I mean, for God’s sake, what is she going to do? Remove the salt and pepper shakers, the utensils, the three wine glasses and two plates and give me a new table cloth?

Well, that is exactly what she did, with such authority, grace and aplomb that you would think she had practiced doing just this thing in flight attendant school. She then replaced the salt and pepper shakers, utensils, wine glasses and plates, disappeared again and brought out my filet. Now it was time to eat.

We love the French, because they wouldn’t deign to allow you to eat with an unsightly red wine stain on your white table cloth. We love that they pay attention to even the smallest details, and take very seriously the aesthetic experience, especially at the table. But what we don’t like is the fuss, how this utter devotion to what is correctly beautiful gets in the way of the actual enjoyment of that beauty. Case in point, and a bit of a teaser: look for my column in a couple weeks about a waiter refusing to serve wasabi in a Paris sushi restaurant.

The filet was a perfectly cooked medallion of steak, only slightly warm, served with two spherical little potato puffs, a couple slices of lightly sauteed oyster mushrooms, a braised leek and a sauteed shallot. And with that, the attendant brought a warm pitcher full of a brown bordelaise sauce that she poured all over the plate. The anticipation of eating this with the elixir of St. Emilion had me squirming.

I tried not to think about the other 500 or so passengers to my rear, sequestered behind a curtain, packed like sardines in chairs without leather armrests, and beverage options that were not seven years old.

There are few paradises like the filet and the mushroom, or the filet and the potato, or the filet and the wine from Bordeaux. That is why a steakhouse is one of the most common types of American fine dining establishments. And this filet was perfectly cooked, soft, maybe a little dry, but at 43,000 feet, the sheer decadence of this meal was like a bubble bath where the bubbles come from bottles of champagne. I savored every bite.

Next week: A Cheese Course at 43,000 Feet