Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Page 15
MISC. (Column)
Farewell to the Regent Voyager...Farewell for Good
By ROGER M. GRACE
Despite my grumbling last week about the cuisine on the Regent Seven Seas Voyager, my wife and I found during a recent cruise in Norway that it is possible to get good food onboard.
There was herring in mustard sauce at buffets. It’s just like that we get in L.A. in jars. They come from Sweden. The herring marinated in vinegar was also good...also like that sold at Olsen’s Scandinavian market on Pico, Alpine Village, and elsewhere. (On the next-to-last day, they apparently had excess mustard sauce at the bottom of a jar and added vinegar-marinated herring to the sauce, thus devising an innovative and unpalatable dish.)
Some of the cheeses, both in the French restaurant and the buffets, were superb. In other words, they do have the competence to serve packaged foods.
It’s just that cooking is not their forte. At one lunch buffet, I made the mistake of having some suckling pig carved. It was not like the moist pig that we serve at our MetNews office parties which we buy in Chinatown. It was so overcooked that, if served to prison inmates, the ACLU would bring a lawsuit based on cruel treatment. But the graved lachs at that buffet was quite good...which shows, again, they need to stick to packaged foods.
On the Fourth of July, Jo-Ann and I wanted a traditional hot dog for lunch. At a lavish buffet, they did, indeed, have hot dogs. When we sat down, we realized they were cold. An accommodating waiter offered to heat them. The problem is that when you microwave hot dogs, the frankfurter gets dried out and the bun becomes hard.
One day they offered “Scandinavian delicacies” at a lunch buffet. They had “Swedish potato dumplings.” The authentic ones are like Norwegian potato balls (“raspeballer” or “kumle”) except that the Swedes sometimes stick a piece of ham inside. My grandfather made kumle, my mother did, and Jo-Ann and I have eaten it in Seattle and in Bergen. This was not kumle; this was a wad of glue.
On our last night on the ship, we had a superb meal of Norwegian smoked salmon, smoked whale, peppered mackerel, and a Norwegian brown goat cheese called gjetost. It was all food we had brought on board from ports. When we paid the charge for the cruise, we didn’t know we would be brown-bagging.
And then there’s the matter of “Lars.” That’s the moniker Jo-Ann ascribed to a crumb...a large one that resembled a corn flake. Lars was there on the floor of the bathroom when we boarded in Copenhagen and Lars was still there when we left the ship 14 days later in the Copenhagen.
Before leaving, Jo-Ann left this note for the next occupants of Cabin 867:
Perhaps a series of passengers assigned to that cabin will be able to track Lars’s voyage through the months.
It must be said that the Regent staff is, in general, well-trained and attentive. We brought two seagull eggs on board with us from Tromsø, and they were kind enough to scramble them for us.
There are, however, some language difficulties. I wanted to get a peanut butter malt for Jo-Ann. They had peanut butter ice cream. They had a malted milk machine. But the attendant didn’t know what a “malt” is. I substituted the term “malted milk.” I was told: “We have two kinds of milk: regular and no-fat.” I made further tries at communicating; other crew members gathered about. Jo-Ann did not get a malt.
There is no separate charge for alcoholic beverages, and tips are built into the price.
Overall, the quality is far beneath what we had expected based on the cruise line’s reputation. Aside from the cuisine here being second-rate, the décor lacks elegance, the stage productions are unimpressive, and there is a pretense of quality.
This was our fourth trip to Norway, and we intend to go there again. But not on a Regent cruise.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company