Dining On Ships
ONBOARD THE OCEANIA RIVIERA — When you talk the talk, you have to be able to walk the walk, right? So when Oceania confidently states its ships have the "finest cuisine at sea"…everybody involved with the cuisine has to be able to "wok the wok." This is especially true when the ship is the [...]
Continue reading about Riviera’s Food Reputation on the Line
Hands up, if you know somebody who has or has had cancer. Hands down, if you've thought about eating better because of it. We've never been vegetarians. One of us (hands up) is more of a carnivore than she is. Yet we have both felt the urge, or need, to become "more vegetarian" because, frankly, [...]
A husband and wife from Houston write about (and take photos of) cruises, just like we do, so it will come as no surprise that we are friends. But we knew Harry and Joan Shattuck many, many years before any of us had been on a cruise ship, let alone written about one. Today, the [...]
Continue reading about Oceania: One Delicious Cruise Preview
This is never included in the food-and-beverage announcements from cruise lines, but it seems to us they’re having some difficulty in (a) keeping their specialty restaurants busy and (b) dealing with complaints from passengers who feel they’re being nickeled-and-dimed every time they’re thirsty. As evidence of our supposition, we offer two items as evidence: 1. [...]
There is news this week of a restaurant change that was prompted by the passenger feedback, and it’s going to be interesting to see what the passenger feedback is now. The restaurant is Sabatini’s, now on 13 of the 16 Princess ships, including the Coral Princess. We mention that because we were on the Coral [...]
It’s not so long ago that when people talked about cruising, the quantity of food was at the top of the list. Not quality…quantity! Things have changed. On our last cruise, aboard the Coral Princess, we noticed the sensible size of dinner portions. Make no mistake…you can still eat as much as you like, but [...]
Continue reading about If You’ve Been Overeating on Cruises…
We’d love to go on a Cunard cruise. We think. For all its ups and downs, Cunard is the grandfather of cruise lines. Cunard is the company that had the ships that made all of us think we’d never be able to afford cruising. Cunard and its Queens — Mary 2, Victoria and Elizabeth — [...]
Tip can be a four-letter word on cruise ships. When do you tip, when don’t you tip? The rule of thumb is that you pay $10 or more per-person per-day, and that’s it. Well, that used to be the rule of thumb. People on vacations generally prefer some form of all-inclusivity, even with tipping. Today, [...]
It was with some surprise that we discovered Norwegian is taking pizza to a new level, or hour. When we sailed on the Epic in November, we noticed that pizza was available 24/7 (from room service after midnight), and in another era we couldn’t have counted the times we’d relished the thought of having pizza [...]
Four years ago, Celebrity hired Jacques Van Staden as its Vice-President of Food & Beverage Operations. He was just 36, a rising star in the culinary world (nominated as such by the prestigious James Beard Foundation), and eager to make his mark on what the general population considers fine dining. On the Celebrity Eclipse, a [...]