Friday, July 17, 2009
Page 11
MISC. (Column)
Dirty Cup, Unappetizing Meat Mark First Day on Regent Voyager
By ROGER M. GRACE
Right from the first day, we realized that our June 26-July 10 journey in Norway on the Regent Seven Seas Voyager would not be of the quality commonly ascribed to the cruise line.
As I went into on Wednesday, its reputation was acquired before its cutbacks.
When we arrived on board, the rooms weren’t ready yet, but a buffet lunch was available on Deck 11. Danish sausage was being served, fresh off a grill at the poolside. I picked up a plate to hand to my wife, Jo-Ann. The plate was filthy. Well, OK, soot was probably being emitted from the grill; it was understandable. I put that plate to the side, and handed Jo-Ann the next one in the stack, which was clean. I picked up the next plate for myself. Filthy. The next one. Filthy. The next one was clean.
We took our sausage inside and sat down. The sausage was good—but, of course, anyone, with no schooling in culinary arts, should be able to heat a sausage on a grill. What we were to soon learn is that the food is just fine on this cruise line if you have something that is taken from a package, tin, or jar, requiring no involvement of anyone purporting to be a chef.
As we were finishing our sausage, a waiter asked if we wanted coffee. Jo-Ann said yes. I asked for hot chocolate. The waiter put down two cups. I looked inside mine. There was a dirty rim around the inside, about a third of the way down. I took a napkin, poured water on it, cleaned out the inside of the cup, the dark-brown sediment now transferred to the napkin. We drank our beverages and left.
When we finally entered the cabin, we encountered sweltering heat. That was, we found out, not a matter of an oversight. Information in printed material in the cabin indicated that guests would need to adjust the thermostat upon entry and that it would take about 30 minutes for temperature to be altered. In the course of the housekeeping staff preparing the rooms, the preparation could have included rendering the rooms habitable by turning on the air conditioning. Apparently, Regent didn’t want to waste the kilowatts on empty rooms, opting to economize even though guests would start their journeys, once they got to the cabins, in discomfort.
Each guest gets to make a reservation on two nights during the cruise in the “Prime 7” restaurant, featuring what is supposedly prime meat. We made a reservation there for the first night. Lucky us.
“With the chef’s compliments,” there was triumphantly presented a mini-hamburger with a brown sauce. It had the flavor—what flavor there was—of boiled beef. It was in the nature of a patty of chopped pot roast. If you come to the lunchroom at our office in downtown Los Angeles and insert a $1 bill in our food machine, you can often procure a patty on a bun with a brown sauce which, after being heated in the microwave, is adequate to qualify as a meal, though barely so. That packaged, quick-food dish is gourmet fare compared with the mini-hamburger which Regent mistakes for a treat,
The waiter was taken aback that we hadn’t devoured the offering. “Why?,” he presumptuously inquired. Jo-Ann told him it was a weak imitation of a hamburger.
Then came the salad Jo-Ann ordered. No problem. There also came the intriguing appetizer that caught my attention: three kinds of steak tartare: “classical,” oriental, and veal. None was particularly good. There were three small blobs of raw ground meat, with differing seasonings. The “classical” rendition wasn’t. That globule was missing anchovies, capers, onions, egg yolk—that is, the essentials. Also, no toast points were served; not even unpointed toast. Just the three small blobs.
Next: the entrees.
Jo-Ann had ordered an end cut of prime rib. What she got was a slab of meat that struck me from its appearance as quite unappetizing. Jo-Ann confirms that the taste was not that of prime rib. Perhaps it was a piece of inartfully prepared bull’s rump. She thinks it might well have been baked in a pot.
I had lamb chops. Yes, the meat was lamb. But was it prime meat? Either the meat was other than prime—meaning that the name of the restaurant, Prime Seven, was a sham and the cruise line’s express representation of serving prime meats there a lie—or the cooks posing as chefs were so grossly inept that they turned good meat into cafeteria fare.
We left. A young woman from the restaurant, discerning our disgruntlement, followed us out and evinced concern. She displayed graciousness and a desire to set things right. What was irresolvable was the woeful lack of talent on the part of the food-preparers.
The second night, we ate at the French restaurant. It was much better, but not excellent.
The food in the main dining room was, we found, adequate. Jo-Ann had some cod one night which, she remarked, was not as good as that we had on the SAS flight between London and Copenhagen. When cruise food does not match that an airline serves, something is wrong.
Indeed, plenty is wrong on the Regent Voyager. A few things are right. There’s more discussion to come.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company