Quality of catering in F/J classes - variance amongst stations?

[stargold]

I was wondering this on my previous flights where I flew LHR-SIN and SIN-LHR in Y, and SIN-ICN and HKG-SIN in F. In particular, the SIN-ICN was a Lunch flight, and the HKG-SIN was a Dinner flight.

On both sets of flights, the standard of catering (quality and taste of the food) was noticeably better on the ex-SIN flights in both F and Y than it did ex-HKG and LHR respectively. So, is this the general trend of overseas catering falling behind SIN, or was I just unlucky?

I'm asking this because I'm debating whether to redeem a seat in F for LHR-SIN on, say, the SQ319, or whether to redeem it on the SQ318 on SIN-LHR. I suppose there is the opportunity to actually have a decent meal in the LHR VS Clubhouse if I was flying on SQ319, but I would nevertheless prefer to know in advance what to expect.

Any thoughts from the collective wisdom?

[icn.sg]

There'll always be variance between SATS catering in SIN and outsourced catering in other stations. While some stations have excellent caterers, others generally deliver average catering to their clients.

It's not difficult to understand why SATS in SIN generally (not always) provide better catering ex-SIN. SIN being SQ's base, SQ has the necessary measures/resources to ensure that quality of inflight catering is maintained. SQ has been known to go down pretty hard on SATS whenever there are complaints over their uplifted meals.

However, this changes overseas, where SQ doesn't always have much resources (apart from a sole catering officer) to monitor quality. At the end of the day, these overseas caterers view SQ as just one of their many clients.

That aside, sometimes cost cutting and the agreed cost-per-meal would have an impact on the quality of your meals in P, J or Y.