Celebrity Silhouette, dining

Porch restaurant
Caesar salad (anchovies optional!) at the new Porch restaurant

The Japanese have a business philosophy called kaizen, which means continuous improvement. No matter how slick a process is, kaizen says that constant small improvements can – and should – always be made.

I have a deep suspicion that Celebrity Cruises are practising kaizen.

I’ve been invited on the inaugural cruises for Celebrity’s last three Solstice-class ships. These enormous floating palaces are the largest and swankiest in Celebrity’s already pretty large and swanky fleet, and although plenty of what’s on board will be recognisable across all four ships, there have been changes in each new launch – some, like the tweaks to Murano’s cheeseboard, so small you might not even notice; some surprisingly large, like the wholesale transformation of Michael’s Club from a cigar bar to a craft beer venue. If you read my reviews of the previous ships in the fleet, you might remember my bafflement at the inclusion on the last three ships of a glass-blowing studio. That’s gone on Silhouette, to be replaced by a prepossessingly calm and comfy cabana area on one of the ship’s lawns (these ships all have lawns – an amazingly difficult thing to maintain in the salty atmosphere at sea, but maintained they are, and handsomely) and a new barbecue restaurant.

I only had two days on board to explore all the changes, and two days is nothing like long enough to work your way around all the menus on board. The standard dining, and unlimited standard drinks (a variety of beers, wines and spirits) are all included in the price of your cruise. The included dining covers the huge formal dining room; the buffet, which stretches over nearly an entire deck; the pool deck grill, serving chilli, nachos, hot dogs and other poolside goodies; a terrific gelato bar down on deck 5; sandwiches, patisseries, tea and coffee in Cafe al Bacio; cocktails and nibbles in several bars; and the odd little treatsome canapé left in your room if you’re travelling concierge or Aqua class.

Lawn Club Grill
Lawn Club Grill being set up for the evening crowd

All this means that once you’re on board, there’s really no reason to spend any extra money on eating or drinking – but if you’re reading this, you’re probably pretty motivated by food and don’t mind spending a little more for something a bit different. For those who are looking for something special, Silhouette houses a number of other drinking and dining venues, all with different ambiances. I wrote about Qsine (an additional $35 per head) at the restaurant’s launch on Eclipse, and the whole interactive eating experience has proved so popular (you have to admit that a burger is much more fun when you’re squizzling your own sauce on it and draping it with your own idea of the right amount of fried onion) that they’ve introduced another interactive dining venue on Silhouette. The Lawn Club Grill, up on the top deck, where you’ll pay an extra $30 per person, has DIY pizzas for the kids, and DIY flat breads for you. The real draw, though, is the barbecue element where New York strip, filet mignon and rib-eye steaks, snapper, salmon, veal, lamb and a big selection of kebabs are available for you to grill yourself to your own liking at your own table. If you’re not up for barbecuing your own dinner, the chefs will do it for you – but where’s the fun in that? There are some pretty special accompaniments on offer, which will be delivered to your table. Allergies prevented me from trying it myself, but I’m told I must encourage you to sample the lobster macaroni cheese in particular.

Also up on the top deck, you find The Alcoves, a pretty little lawn with eight cabanas which can be rented by the hour or the day. Picnic baskets are available here for a price, and there’s also waiter service for drinks and snacks. These new venues replace the glass-blowing studio that’s been on the top decks of previous ships (I have never been able to get my head around the presence of a seagoing glass-blowing studio), along with a $5 dining venue (one of a few on board), The Porch. Here, you’ll find paninis and salads. It’s a lovely quiet spot if you’re looking to get away from the hurly-burly of the pool area, one deck below.

The Alcoves
The Alcoves

Tuscan Grill ($30), Blu (complimentary for Aquaclass passengers), Qsine ($35) and Murano ($35) are still the first-class restaurant lineup at the back of the ship on the fifth deck, which is the deck where those with a care for their stomach will be spending most of their time. There are changes down here – Murano is now offering a champagne afternoon tea, with some terrific little finger sandwiches, strawberries, pastries and the inevitable scones, jam and clotted cream. In the spirit of kaizen, little changes have been made to dishes I’ve eaten in these restaurants on previous ships: I’m not quite sure exactly what’s happened to Qsine’s Disco Shrimp, but it’s gone from a merely-quite-good dish to an absolute must-order, sweet, tender and very, very tasty. Ceviches are also very good now, and any dish which has its origins in the SW of America is pretty much guaranteed to be worth ordering: Chef Jaques van Staden’s Las Vegas roots do show now and then! Murano’s duck foie gras and rilettes dish has turned into a foie and confit plate, the confit appearing in a Moroccan pastilla, crisp, paper-thin bric pastry doing great things to its texture. What used to be a tomato coulis in this dish is now candied mango. On my first visit to Murano, two ships ago, I didn’t feel it was really competitive with top-class restaurants on land, but it’s now pulling its weight: witness the sea bass (picture at the bottom of this post), previously a bit tired, salty and dried-out; now succulent, elegantly sauced and good enough that you’ll be dibbling your bread on the plate when you’ve finished the fish.

Murano is probably the most romantic spot on board for dining, with private-feeling booths and a clever layout to make you feel remote from other diners. I’d especially recommend it to those cruising to celebrate a honeymoon or anniversary. Portions are still enormous. This is a direct result of the ship’s American ownership and international clientele. This feels a bit odd in a fine-dining restaurant, but when someone feels like giving me a gargantuan portion of foie, I am not going to complain.

Get chatting to your server. The staff on board these ships are universally friendly and helpful – and if you make friends, as we did with the utterly charming Anne Toures, a chef de rang at Murano, you might find the service elevates itself to superhuman levels. Anne, after a couple minutes’ chatting about blue French cheeses (I’d been wittering on about how it’d be nice to see a blue that wasn’t a Roquefort on the large chariot de fromages), disappeared and came back with a piece of Rochebaron from Auvergne for us that hadn’t made it to the cheeseboard – soft, blue, with an ash-rolled rind and completely new to me. A real treat.

I love watching the way these ships evolve. I love being surprised every time I visit by the force-ten smiles of every single member of staff, the shimmering cleanliness of everything on board, and the clever little features like the ice bar, and the Enomatic machines in Wine Masters (charge a swipe-card, and organise your own tasting – there are some really exciting wines on offer in here). I love waking to the sound of the sea, I love that I can retire to a Deck 11 treehouse, of all things, if things get too much; and I love the fact that there’s an iLounge and a Bulgari shop on board. Keep at the kaizen, Celebrity – you’re doing a great job.

Ceviche trio
Ceviche trio, Qsine. Three beautifully balanced ceviches, and a rather random helping of chips.

 

Sea bass
Sea bass at Murano

 

iPad menu
Another iPad menu at Qsine. I swear: you have never in your life seen a cleaner and more smear-free iPad than these.

 

Veal chop
A very good veal chop at Murano, sized for American appetites. Fantastic accompaniments - breaded cauliflower and little garlic spinach cubes.

 

Les Six Etoiles de Murano
Les Six Etoiles de Murano - Murano's signature desert. To be shared!

 

Maltese flag
A lovely view to take in over an evening gin and tonic at the Sunset Bar, located right at the back of the ship.

 

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Garden Par-tea afternoon tea, Royal Horseguards hotel, London

Another season, another one of Joanne Todd’s afternoon teas. I was invited to visit the Royal Horseguards hotel again last week for an afternoon tea timed to coincide with this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, all the patisseries flavoured, this time, with flowers. Add a pot of flowering tea, some chocolate butterflies and leaves attached to the cake stand with melted chocolate (no picture of these; my partner-in-tea snapped them off and ate them before I got to them with the camera), the compulsory scones, and a stack of neat little finger sandwiches, you’ll find yourself with a very good reason to skip lunch.

Patisseries
Floral patisseries

It’s the application of a fierce imagination to what’s on the plate that so charms in these afternoon teas. A Felchlin chocolate cremeux was flavoured with lavender – and popping candy. Elderflower cupcakes; chocolate chip loaf spiked with orange blossom; a lemon drizzle cake where much of the citrus aroma actually comes from lemon thyme. The raspberry and hibiscus flower jelly tart and a violet cupcake had me grinning like a lunatic. These patisseries are beautiful, they’re superbly delicate, and they make for one of those rare examples of something that really does taste as good as it looks.

The Garden Par-tea had a short run and finishes today, but Joanne is, as ever, keeping busy: look out for another Wimbledon-themed tea this June, and a children’s afternoon tea later in the summer, complete with alphabet shortbread, toy soldiers and jelly bears.

Scones
Tiny scones with a positive mountain of clotted cream and jam, and some super-duper finger sarnies

I’ve been visiting the hotel for Joanne’s teas for a year now, and it’s great to see the little refinements made to what’s on offer every time. The scones have shrunk to a much more manageable size (I still couldn’t get through two, though, especially on top of all the lovely little cakes); the sandwich fillings are becoming more complicated – and this time, there was a handsome amount of chocolate kicking around to round things off.

Royal Horseguards terrace
The Royal Horseguards terrace, just across the street from the Thames

The hotel has undergone some renovations in the last few months, and the outside terrace (closed to diners when I visited because it was such a windy day, but I managed to get outside to take some pictures) has been completely revamped.

I’m wondering if I can convince someone to lend me their children in time for Joanne’s upcoming kids’ afternoon tea. I like the sound of those jelly bears.

Blogging from Ballymaloe

“…And we got to spend an afternoon with Darina Allen at Ballymaloe,” I said to some Irish friends back here in the UK, on my return from our bloggers’ pootle around the foodier bits of Cork and Waterford. Frequently, Irish eyes are held to be smiling. On this occasion, they all rolled back in their respective skulls with envy.

Darina Allen
Darina Allen

“Darina Allen? She’s the only person whose recipes I use! Em…apart from yours, of course, so,” said one friend, upon which she immediately started fiddling with her beer. “You are so lucky,” said another. “I would kill to spend an afternoon with Darina Allen.”

Her husband (English), shuffled away from her nervously on his bottom. “Who’s Darina Allen?”

This comes under the class of questions that you should never ask an Irish person if you do not wish to be scoffed at vigorously. “You know your woman Delia Smith? Like that, but good. And organic. And without the football and the shite food,” said one angry Irishwoman. “She is only the whole reason that Irish food is any good these days. And you know that pot-roast you like? And the raspberry roulade? And all the stuff from that big white book in the kitchen? I can’t believe you don’t know who she is.”

“Jaysus,” agreed Irish friend #1.

Steps at the Ballymaloe student cottages
Steps at the Ballymaloe student cottages

Darina is, in fact, the dynamic force behind the world-renowned Ballymaloe cookery school, set in the middle of its own 100-acre organic farm and gardens. She’s head of the country’s slow food movement, is currently very deeply involved in a project to get farmers’ markets embedded in Irish shopping culture, is the author of a vast number of cookery books, and, alongside teaching at the cookery school, works as a TV presenter and newspaper columnist. She might well be the most energetic person I have ever met – our meeting at Midleton farmers’ market resulted in an impromptu whistlestop tour of the market, followed by sublime pizzas at the Ballymaloe cookery school’s Saturday Pizza Kitchen (a business idea totally out of left-field but typically popular and successful), and a long tour of the gardens and farm. At all stages in the day, Darina was multitasking. Collecting firewood as we walked around the gardens; shouting encouragement and advice to gardening staff; swiping invisible motes of dust off pristine teaching kitchens; making sure the egg incubators were working properly; poking at piles of rotting seaweed composting down for the farm’s potatoes; discussing lists of the very few ingredients, like flour, which need to be ordered in because the farm can’t produce enough for the school, with a chef jogging alongside us; picking wet walnuts; checking the locks on the greenhouses: all I was doing was following her around, taking pictures and making notes, and it was enough to leave me breathless, exhausted and craving a glass of something strong with ice in.

It was all rather brilliant. I left wanting to take up Darina as my new exercise regime.

Utensils
In the teaching kitchen

There’s so much emphasis at Ballymaloe on the time and effort it takes to raise food properly. Cookery students  “adopt” a fertilised chicken egg and watch the egg’s progression from potential scramble to chick to hen. Their first task at the school is to plant seeds (a large part of the grounds is given over to student vegetable plots) which grow into vegetables over their time at the school. Food raised with care and respect costs time and money; there are good reasons why you should be deeply suspicious of a £4 supermarket chicken. There is solar panelling (“Much more effective than they thought it would be, because of the reflections from the sea,” crowed Darina), rainwater collection, all that seaweed being used as a fertiliser (“We do not use cow muck from cows we do not raise ourselves. Who knows what they have been eating and what drugs they have ingested?”), a refusal to take up Government grants which might impact on the way things are done here, and more ethical responsibility in the stewardship of the land than you can shake a stick at. (Don’t, by the way. Darina will take it from you and use it for firewood in the bread oven.)

Ballymaloe gardens
Ballymaloe gardens

Because much of the food produced here is not being sold, but being used for teaching purposes, plenty of produce is made in the old-fashioned ways, exempt from EU legislation about temperature control, hairnets and bleach. So you’ll find a breezy barn whose ceiling is packed with hooks from which charcuterie dangles, a shed for cheesemaking with big fermentation tanks alongside cloth-wrapped cheeses stacked on the wooden shelves, and garlic drying in the sun.

Greenhouse
One of the cavernous greenhouses - parsley, lettuce, marigold for salads, tomatoes.

Darina and the rest of the staff at the cookery school have done the seemingly impossible – turned traditional, ethical, methods of raising, marketing and cooking food into something that’s not so much a business as a movement that seems to be sweeping through Ireland. Ballymaloe is still one of the most respected places to train as a professional chef, but also runs short courses and afternoon demonstrations for amateurs – which I mean in the word’s strictest sense of those who are passionate – in food. If you’re the short-course holiday type, I can’t think of a lovelier or more inspiring place to spend your time.

Saturday pizza
Saturday pizza from Philip Dennhardt, one of the school's tutors and winner of our group's "Chef we would most like to abduct" prize.
Darina in one of the teaching kitchens
Darina testing the day's output - a gluten-free bread for a class of coeliacs - in one of the teaching kitchens
Borage
Borage
Ballymaloe chickens
Some of the farm's chickens, enjoying a dust bath.
Gourds
Gourds from the farm, ready for Halloween.
Herbaceous borders
Herbaceous borders, which provide flowers in season for the school and restaurant.

A weekend in Ireland

The recession has hit hard in Ireland. For the country’s food businesses, it’s been a double-edged sword; some restaurants are now choosing to open seasonally, or for only part of the week, and you can’t help but notice the closed shops as you drive through the small towns.

Kinsale harbour

But closures aren’t the whole of the story. Markets and local producers are winning shoppers away from the supermarkets with some superb produce and giddily good pricing, while also weaning the restaurant business off reliance on wholesalers; most of the menus you’ll see are packed to the gills with meat, fish and vegetables sourced from only a few miles around. Innovation in food, from special Saturday pizza kitchens, to Irish-Indian spice blenders and microbreweries specialising in the kinds of real ale that knock Guinness into a cocked hat, are under every mossy stone you overturn – and they’re drawing in the punters. And best of all, you remember all that stuff you’ve heard about Ireland being an expensive place to visit? Not true any more. This is a perfect time to visit the island; you’ll holiday like a king, and while you’re doing it, you’ll be supporting an admirable local food economy which really deserves a few of your vacation Euros.

McGrath butchers, Lismore
The McGrath family in Lismore has been farming for ten generations, and in butchery for four. They supply many local restaurants and markets with their own grass-fed Aberdeen Angus and Hereford Cross, as well as running a traditional shop on Lismore high street.

I was in Cork and Waterford for three nights as a guest of Tourism Ireland, who have done all the work for you if you fancy planning a gourmet trip to the country, with the very informative foodie bit of their website. The schedule they’d worked out with the brilliant Niamh from Eat Like A Girl had five food bloggers churning up the countryside in a minibus, speeding (I mean that literally; Paddy, our driver, was in a constant hurry to get back to his wife) from market to museum to butcher to cookery school to farm to…kayak in an exhaustive tour of what the two counties have to offer. I can heartily recommend kayaking through Cork’s two main city channels at sunset if you’re in the mood to burn off some of what you’ve eaten; Jim and Barry from Atlantic Sea Kayaking put even the most nervous of us at our ease – and nobody got wet.

Paddy in the kitchen
Paddy, our much-put-upon driver, breaks for Mikado biscuits and Barry's tea in Mary McGrath's kitchen while we tour the abattoir.

If you’re in the country, it’s really worth your while making use of the refrigerator in your hotel room, packing a coolbag in your suitcase and shopping for some market produce while you’re there. Stand-outs which you can transport quite easily include the smoked fish, especially Frank Hederman’s exceptional product from the Bevelly Smokehouse. We bumped into Frank himself twice, once at the English Market in Cork, where Kay Harte from the Farmgate Café and restaurant took the time to give us a market tour, and once at the lovely little farmers’ market in Midleton. In the winter, try his buttery-smooth smoked mackerel; Frank says the fish don’t eat over the winter and stop producing stomach acid, which results in a much less acid flesh in the fish as a whole. However it’s done, I’ve never sampled a better smoked mackerel. If you can’t get to Cork, Frank also supplies Selfridges in London with his silky smoked salmon and some other smoked products.

Frank Hederman
Frank Hederman gives an impromptu salmon demonstration at the English Market in Cork

Spiced beef is a Cork favourite. The shipping lanes which used to pass through Cork at the height of the British Empire (you can learn more about this at the city’s wonderful butter museum, where we saw a 1000-year-old chunk of bog butter preserved in a case) injected the city’s traditional cuisine with flavours not seen in the rest of the country. Paul Coughlan at the English Market is making spiced beef to his family’s old recipe, (“We use cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, pepper…and some secrets”) , brined in a wet spice mix, poached, then rolled in a dry mix. Thin slivers are terrific as a charcuterie with drinks; in Cork it’s very popular at Christmas, and again, it’ll travel well in your suitcase.

O'Reilly's, English Market, Cork
Honeycomb tripe being weighed out at O'Reilly's in the English Market

Local soda breads are available all over the country, from the very dark brown kind made with molasses to the pale golden kind, sometimes spiked with caraway seeds. There’s not as much in the way of yeasted artisanal bakery here as you might find in other countries, soda bread having such an important role in Irish food tradition, but we found some very good breads at the markets we visited, all the better for being made in small batches. And the sausages – we enjoyed some from Catherine O’Mahoney at the English Market, who is a third-generation butcher – along with black and white pudding for breakfast, are a local necessity. Braver souls should head for O’Reilly’s in the English Market to sample driheen, a very traditional beef-blood sausage flavoured with tansy. It’s traditionally served with tripe in a bechamel; O’Reilly’s is one of the last places in the country that still makes and sells what’s becoming a fast-vanishing local speciality. Driheen and tripe are also served at the Farmgate café in the market, which I’ll expand on in a later post.

Declan Ryan
Declan Ryan from the Arbutus Bakery in Cork at Midleton Farmers Market

We saw lots of soft farm cheeses; these won’t travel so well, but can make a lovely picnic if you’re foraging for lunch at a market. Desmond and Gabriel are two hard cheeses from the West Cork Natural Cheese Company, and are sold all over; they’ve a Parmesan-like tang to them, and are well worth bringing home with you. Most places selling the cheeses should let you try a nibble before you buy. I also stocked up with some spice mixes from Green Saffron, an Irish food success story who blend a dizzying array of spice mixtures, and a few packets of the house blends from the tiny Cork Coffee Roasters.

Cormac O'Dwyer, Dungarvan Brewing Company
Cormac O'Dwyer, head brewer at the Dungarvan Brewing Company. Microbrew is still a very minority way to do business in Ireland, and Cormac's beers are a fine thing indeed.

There was much more to the weekend’s gorging than you’ll want to read at one sitting, so I’ll follow this up later with a post touching on some of the restaurants we ate at, some of the cookery demonstrations we enjoyed, and some of the hotels we stayed in. Many thanks especially to Niamh “Eat Like A Girl” Shields, Sarah and Aoife from Tourism Ireland, and Denise “Wine Sleuth” Medrano, Ailbhe “Simply Splendiferous” Phelan and Signe “Scandilicious” Johansen for being among the best company I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend a weekend with. I’m off to fry up some white pudding.

Cork Coffee Roasters
Signe and Aoife grab a much-needed mug of Morning Growler at the Cork Coffee Roasters.

Celebrity Eclipse

Pool deck, Celebrity Eclipse
Pool deck, Celebrity Eclipse

There’s no ship’s biscuit or pemmican in sight – but there is plenty of rum. I’ve just spent the weekend at the naming celebrations on Celebrity Eclipse, a cruise ship you might have seen in the news last week, when she staged an emergency rescue of British holidaymakers stranded in Spain by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano.

Eclipse is the spanking-new sister ship of Solstice and Equinox, which I travelled on last year for a press overnighter. This weekend’s trip was spread across two nights, giving me much more time to explore and enjoy the whole ship – and you’ll need at least that time to get to grips with this enormous floating resort. For those of us whose entire seagoing experience before these Solstice-class ships has been scabby old car ferries, the sheer size and gloss of something like Eclipse is a little overwhelming. There are nine restaurants to choose from (requiring a weekly bacon delivery that is measured in tonnes – you’ve got to love an organisation that measures its bacon in tonnes). There’s a bar for every mood – a wine-tasting room with Enomatic machines to make sure your glass is perfect; a club that’s like something from Captain Scarlet; a quiet, wood-lined cigar bar; a bar up by the pool where you can drink in your bikini; an ice-bar specialising in Martinis; a cocktail joint specialising in molecular techniques; a lounge like Star Trek’s Ten Forward. You can graze on coffee, crepes, patisseries, superb gelato (I recommend the coconut), hot dogs – you can shop in one of 19 boutiques, swim in one of three pools, bob up and down in one of six hot tubs, climb a virtual mountain in the gym or go and get your hair done in the spa. A three-storey theatre hosts a nightly acrobatics show and some variety acts, as well as talks about the ship and the destinations it will be visiting; there are live musicians all over the ship, and you’ll find something to every taste, from Manilow to Mozart, to sit and listen to for a while. There’s a small casino with table games with pleasingly low minimums and slot machines. Like Equinox and Solstice, Eclipse has a lawn club on the roof, with putting, croquet and quoits. And, for some reason which is still totally opaque to me, a glass-blowing studio. There’s so much to do that apparently, many travellers end up staying on board for their whole break rather than going on shore excursions.

Moonlight Sonata restaurant
Moonlight Sonata restaurant

I worked my way around tastings at several of the restaurants (not all of them – I was only there for a couple of days) – I’ll be posting pictures and notes on some of the food available later in the week. For my tastes, the 5th floor Ensemble Lounge and the 4th floor Wine Masters tasting room were the most attractive places to sit with a drink, partly because they’re rather more quiet and intimate than some of the other bars – if you like a bit more excitement with your Cuba Libre, head to the 4th floor Martini Bar, with its ice countertops and beautiful ladies in sequins, or to Quasar, the small and very spangly nightclub.

Accommodation on board is comfortable and surprisingly spacious; the staterooms have all been designed to pack in as much storage space as possible, and even in the smallest rooms you’ll find a desk, a decently sized settee and a superbly comfortable queen-sized bed that can convert into twins. Rounded edges on the beds and the other furniture maximise space in all the staterooms and mean there’s nothing to knock into when you stagger back from the club at three in the morning – and if you need a hand coming round in the morning, there’s a shower with body jets and a rain head to get you ready for breakfast. The cupboards are stocked with Frette dressing gowns, slippers, umbrellas, shopping bags, lighted make up mirrors, binoculars and a fierce little hairdryer, but we still found there was room for several suitcases’-worth of your own belongings in our Deluxe Veranda room. (Leave some space, though – there are, after all, nineteen shops on board to visit.)

Deluxe Veranda Stateroom
Deluxe Veranda Stateroom

There are several classes of stateroom – Celebrity have a run-down of the features of each on their website – most of which have a very private balcony with sun loungers and a sliding picture window. We found ourselves leaving the window open a crack at night to allow the sound of the sea inside and slept blissfully, being rocked gently by the waves. There’s great charm in being woken by a kittiwake on the balcony in the morning and drinking your first cup of tea on a lounger – I recommend it.

Part of what makes Celebrity so successful is the staff, who bend over backwards, forwards and sideways to make your trip a good one. Milk pods for the tea and coffee in the state rooms hadn’t arrived on time because the flight they were on had been stopped by the volcano (Eyjafjallajokull – I really ought to get used to spelling that, because I sure as hell can’t pronounce it) – and about two minutes after we rang to ask for some, a lady appeared at the door with four half-pint cartons for our fridge. There’s a smile on every face, and somebody polishing something around every corner – the place positively glistens. Every time we left the room, we came back to find a new surprise – some flowers, a tray of canapes, a bowl of fruit, a bottle of fizzy wine – I could get very used to being looked after like this.

Lawn Club
Lawn Club (a great spot for a glass of Pimms)

Eclipse is based in Southampton, the first of the Solstice-class ships to have a UK home port. Alongside the outside pools, which I found an absolute joy – I love swimming, and it’s particularly good fun when the pool is bobbing up and down in the sea – there’s an enormous enclosed solarium with another large pool, hot tubs and relaxation pods that you can snuggle up in with…a good friend, which means that even in British weather you can get some sun and swimming in the warm. The tea and kettles in the room are a nod to the UK clientele, and although the food on offer has an American bent, they’ve squeezed fish and chips onto at least one of the menus.

The best recommendation I can give the ship is in the fact that as soon as we disembarked, Dr W and I started to talk about which of the forthcoming cruises we should shell out to go on. Many thanks to Celebrity and Siren PR for putting us up for this inaugural weekend – and watch this space for more on the food later this week.

Celebrity Equinox, Murano restaurant

Cruise ships are (floating) terra incognita to me. The closest I’d managed before being offered last weekend’s very lavish freebie was a number of trips on cross-channel ferries, where the food is always so bad you’re almost obliged to pack a picnic; and my friends’ houseboat in Cambridge where we mostly eat packets of biscuits and drink tea.

I’d imagined cruise ships to be petrol-smelling, slippery-decked, claustrophobic white things, lurching gracelessly between icebergs and tugboats, and occasionally spearing clumsy whales on their prows. “We’ll have bunks,” grumbled Dr W, “and we’ll be in steerage, like Leo Di Caprio. There won’t be any windows.”

Happily, Celebrity Cruises have positioned themselves firmly at the luxury end of the market, so the cabin – sorry, state room – that we’d been apportioned turned out to have king-sized bed with a supremely comfortable pillow-top mattress; thick linen sheets; not only windows, but a private balcony for seagull-spotting; and a shower with those fantastic boob-washing jets in the wall.

The public areas feel like an attempt at a theme park crossed with a Vegas casino and Terminal 5 at Heathrow. I say this as someone who really, really gets a kick out of Terminal 5, which is sick and wrong – you have to admit, though, that the place does gave a certain delicious gleam to it. On Celebrity Equinox, two glistening atriums stretch the whole height of the ship to relieve the sense of low ceilings you can’t really escape in this situation, one with a live orange tree in a big glass pot suspended halfway down the 14-storey space. Up top, the decks are tiled with swimming pools, hot tubs, lawns, a glass-blowing studio (I’m still scratching my head about this one) and a jogging track. Inside, it’s all state rooms, cafes, bars, restaurants, a spa, a solarium, an enormous theatre, clubs, gyms and an ultraloungy sort of observation suite, all circular couches and swanky LED lighting. Everywhere you turn, somebody dressed in white is washing or polishing something.

Cruises of the sort Celebrity runs are generally all-inclusive, but for the four premium restaurants, where you’ll pay an extra $35. (It’s an American company, and the currency on board is the US dollar.) I’d been invited (with Douglas, Andrew and Julia) to lunch with Chef Jaques Van Staden. We were served a six-course tasting menu with wine pairings in Murano, the ship’s top French restaurant, all dark woods and white linens. Here’s JVS (the chap in focus), beaming at something fatuous I (on the right) have just said.

There are constraints on restaurants at sea that I hadn’t even considered before talking to him about the restaurant’s operations. The ship has capacity for 2850 guests, has to feed all these people without recourse to daily markets, and on occasion will go several days without being able to restock. This is an enormous number of people to be feeding – in one year, the company will spend $4.5m on bacon alone, so food sourcing is all centralised. Produce is loaded in shipping containers from three ports around the world, and some clever work on the menus means that the culinary team (of 1253 staff on the ship, more than half work in food and beverage) are able to assemble some surprisingly classy meals which in no way resemble ship’s biscuit. JVS is aiming very, very high in his ambitions for this restaurant, and I’m not quite sure it’s there yet; there were a few slips in what we ate for lunch. But this is a restaurant that’s barely been open for ten days, and as such, there were bound to be a few rough edges that needed smoothing over.

If there’s one thing they’ve licked at Murano, it’s the presentation. Everything was terribly, terribly pretty on the plate; the plates themselves were selected by JVS to match the coppery, woody decor (“No rims. I don’t like a plate with a rim.”) Behold a perfectly pretty amuse – jumbo shrimp in a saffron risotto. Really, really salty, but packed with saffron.

There’s a necessary reliance here on preserved ingredients, so a wild mushroom cappuccino which arrived shortly after I’d spent five minutes banging on about my hatred of foams – oops – used a lot of dried mushrooms and was accompanied by a porcini ice-cream (melting into a small pool by the time it got to my plate, but darned tasty), a clever way to extend the flavour life of the fresh mushroom. The 07 Puligny Montrachet by Louis Jadot with this course was golden and honeyed, a good match with this and, apparently, with the lobster bisque (“Very dense, very flavourful,” said Andrew from Spittoon when I asked him how it was – I have to be careful around lobsters because of the whole anaphylaxis thing, but made up for it by stealing everybody else’s foie gras later in the meal).

Spinach salad was topped off with a disc of pork rillettes (more clever use of preserves), a chicken’s egg (“I think we should use quail here,” said the chef, frowning at my plate – I’m with him on this – a chicken’s yolk is just too much with something as fatsome as rillettes) and a sliver of black truffle, all scattered with dehydrated shallots and shards of crispy pancetta. Before tasting the dish, I asked JVS how they cope with something as perishable as a truffle at sea. He responded with the full force of his giant grin. “We preserve them in port.” Surprisingly successful, and the truffle vinaigrette was a well-balanced foil to the heavy egg and rillettes. There were a few competition winners from Delicious magazine at the table too, and it was a first taste of truffles for one of them – always a lovely thing to witness, especially when the reaction is so unabashedly positive.

A twice-cooked goat’s cheese soufflé for half of us – a seared slice of foie gras and duck rillettes, spiced with star anise and cinnamon for the others. (I did my best to keep from gazing bitterly at their plates, failed and then launched into stealing as much as I could.) The soufflé was a good one – sharp with the goat’s cheese, bathed in a sea of Parmesan-scented Béchamel – and enormous, such that I ended up eating about half. These are very big portions for a tasting menu. I suspect a lot of this is to do with the demographic that makes up Celebrity’s customers – usually older Americans, from the land where the giant portion is king. That demographic suits me just fine, though – it just means more room in the clubs, the pool and the hot tubs for the food blogging contingent on board while everybody else dozes in the sun, as Andrew has helpfully recorded for posterity.

The service is super-attentive; so much so that it all feels a bit unsophisticated, as when the gargantuan pepper grinder is brought out and proffered at the start of every single course. It’s hard to mind – they’re trying so hard to impress, and everybody’s so charming, that I actually missed that grinder when it came to the cheese course. A pretty little apple sorbet spiked with Calvados came out as a palate cleanser – in his review of a similar meal that evening, Jay Rayner called this course old-fashioned, and indeed it was – but it was sweet, it was charming, and it was a nice break from all that dense eating. (I have a soft spot for the concept of a trou Normand, the little hole of space in a full stomach that a gulp of Calvados is meant to give you – my mother used to ensure my little brother and I both got a healthy slurp of hers at large meals when we went on our regular gastronomic tours of France, starting me off on a lifetime of dipsomania.)

Venison for half the table, loup de mer for the other half. A dense Brunello here to drink – not what I’d have chosen with this fish, but it was a pretty good match with the garnish it was sitting on.

Another hurdle for the cruise ship kitchen to jump is refrigeration – meats and fish need to be frozen. JVS has acquired a machine which defrosts flash-frozen meat very slowly, over a four-day period, for an absolute minimum of cellular damage. The meat is never allowed to stay frozen for more than five days. I pinched a bite from Douglas’s plate (hard work with a fish knife, so I made up for it by also stealing most of his celeriac puree – sorry Douglas) – it’s a surprisingly successful process, and I couldn’t detect any hint that the pink, juicy venison loin had been frozen. Cries of surprise went up around the table from anyone who had ever frozen a steak. Unfortunately, a similar process wouldn’t work for fish, and mine came out of the fryer a bit dry and rubbery. Again, though, the presentation was so fine I almost didn’t care – the fish was trapped in a fine net of potato and served on an incredibly dense and beautiful plate of Provençal preserves – capers, artichokes, olives and so on, bound with raw tomatoes and baba ganoush. (There’s another picture of this very pretty course with Monday’s post, where you can also see some more photos of the ship itself.) Fierce flavours, these – my bread roll came in handy to damp down some of what was going on on the plate.

A cheese course next with some ’96 vintage Graham’s port. There was nothing unusual about any of these cheeses, but they were all kept well and chosen well (Epoisses, Livarot, Roquefort, Comte and a nice crottin of Chevre). I notice Jay Rayner was displeased with the texture of his Epoisses that evening – we weren’t given any at lunchtime, although we did see the cheese sitting on the chariot, so I suspect the specialist cheese sommelier (who was great value) secretly agreed with him. The little pot contains a scoop of silky Roquefort sorbet. All the other cheeses, served at a good room temperature with fruits and nuts, were beautiful examples – I am thankful there wasn’t more, because dessert was simply enormous.

Here it is: Les VI Etoiles du Murano. I think this is meant to serve two, but I ended up with one to myself (which I ended up giving most of to Andrew, the very charming competition winner on my left, while I concentrated on the wine). From right (closest) to left, you’re looking at a rose cream with candyfloss (I annexed that one for myself); a black chocolate and coffee mousse; a white chocolate crème with raspberry coulis (the table’s favourite); strawberries poached in Chambertin; an apple and walnut crumble and a milk and caramel gelato with popcorn. Best of all, though, was what we were given to drink with this course (prompted, I suspect, by the arrival of Celebrity’s president, Dan Hanrahan) – a Tokaji from 2003, a year you will probably remember as uncomfortably sweltering. It was just great for Tokaji, such that I can barely read my handwriting in the notes I took over pudding.

JVS oversees the menus at all the onboard restaurants – 3786 different dishes are available across the whole ship, and around 12,000 meals and nibbles are served daily. It’s a hell of an operation, and it’s clearly wise of the company to run day-cruises like ours to help the staff learn to cope – this was only day ten of operations, and our evening meal at the much less swanky main dining room was a bit of a let-down after lunchtime’s service. Food in the gargantuan Silhouette dining room was glacially slow in arriving, so our fellow diners had to skip a course to make it to the theatre in time for the show, and the whole table’s main course plates appeared to have missed a crucial pass through a microwave, arriving fridge-cold. Thank God I’d ordered gazpacho for my starter. (I suspect that this is the sort of problem that won’t occur once the ship is up and running properly.) Wines in the complimentary restaurants aren’t good (to be honest,
the white was so awful I ended up drinking Newcastle Brown Ale instead, to the horror of the ladies I was sharing a table with). It’s clear that a cruising foodie needs to be dedicating himself to find that extra $35 a night to eat in one of the five speciality restaurants – and then to spending the rest of the day on the jogging track to burn off all that Béchamel.

Istanbul spice bazaar

I’ve just got back from Istanbul, where I spent several days gorging myself on kebabs, dates, grilled fish, honeycomb, morello cherry juice and other good things. I am currently too jetlagged to come up with any really sparkling prose, so this will mostly be a picture post from the city’s spice market, where about 100 small stalls in a covered bazaar sell everything from henna to sumac. It’s an essential shopping destination if you’re in the city and you’re at all interested in food.

Turkish sweetsThis stall was selling loukhoum (Turkish delight – here’s my recipe) and baclava, the tooth-hurtingly sweet pastries soaked in a sugar syrup that you might have had with coffee in Turkish or Greek restaurants. I did not sample the aphrodisiac delight on the right, but judging by the huge chunks that had obviously already been sold on the day I visited, some people must think it’s effective. Behind the blocks are tins of Iranian caviar. The caviar is also sold from blocks, sliced and then jarred. Nilgun, our excellent guide, suggested putting a dab of butter in the top of the jar to keep the caviar fresh.

Spice marketRaw spices, including several grades of flaked chilli and powdered paprika. I’d already tried some of the very dark chilli in the second row, sprinkled on a rotisserie chicken; we came away from the market with a little packet to use at home. At the left-hand side of the picture you can see almonds for sale, still in their shells; the dried roots at the front next to the bundles of cinnamon are turmeric and ginger. There’s more caviar in tins above the display, next to jars of pomegranate molasses.

HoneycombRaw honeycomb, kept behind glass to keep insects away. There was a big slab of this laid out every morning at our hotel breakfast; we squashed it with a fork to drive the honey out of the waxy comb, and then ate it with yoghurt, on croissants and on toast.

SaffronThis stall was labelling several substances as saffron. None of the yellow/orange things on offer was real saffron; the powder at the front was turmeric, and the fat orange stamens on the plastic trays at the left (much fatter than the thread-like real thing) were safflower, which doesn’t taste of much and is used primarily in dyes. Caveat emptor.

Dried fruitFour grades of dates, some prunes, and two grades of apricots. Most stalls selling dried fruit sold hunza apricots in their dark, untreated form alongside the bright orange ones (which are treated with sulphur dioxide to preserve their colour). If you find the less attractive brown ones, buy them; all the flavour and aroma of the fresh fruit is concentrated in them, and they’re much better than the orange ones. We sampled several grades of date, and there was method in the pricing; the expensive ones really were the best, with thin skins and a moist, fudgy interior – it was hard to believe that what you were eating was a fruit.

I’ve got some restaurant recommendations for you, some street food tips and some more market exploration coming up – watch this space.

India – the food bit

Delhi saw us eating less adventurously than I would have liked – we were on a tight schedule, eating mostly at the numerous ceremonies and parties, and later not able to eat due to a stomach bug. I still managed to get plenty of variety in, though, and can tell you about some of the highlights of the food.

Some of the curry I ordered was startlingly good. This is a Murg Tikka Patialewala – chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices, grilled and cooked in a pureed tomato and cashew sauce. The one-size-fits-all curry powder you see in the UK is a British empire invention, originally mixed for colonials to send home to cook with. No two curries in the same restaurant in India had the same base of spices (unlike those in some lazy Indian restaurants in the UK). This chicken was very heavy on the fenugreek and cumin, and had a lot of raw grated ginger stirred into it.

We ate breads with the curry – crisp parathas and open-textured naan, all made with rich and delicious ghee. Eating a curry with your hands takes a bit of getting used to (the right hand only – the left is reserved for . . . other purposes), but can be done quite neatly if you use a piece of bread as a little envelope to put your curry in. Papads (popadoms), grilled rather than fried, and flavoured with cracked black pepper, were served with every meal.

On one of our two free afternoons, we took a trishaw ride around Chandi Chowk, one of Delhi’s oldest market areas. The driver was pedaling furiously, and it was extremely hard to stop in the constant stream of trishaw traffic, but we were able to look at, if not taste, a variety of street food (all going past at speed).

People were crowding everywhere, many eating on the hoof. Stalls were ordered by type, so we pedaled through a stationery quarter, a car parts quarter, a sari quarter and a jewellery quarter. I asked the driver to take us to the food quarter. He put a spurt on and started to pedal enthusiastically through the crowd; no mean feat on a trishaw with two compulsive overeaters perched on the back.

Asking to see the nutritional sites was a bit of a mistake on my part. Unfortunately, ‘food quarter’ when parsed through our driver turned out to mean ‘chicken market’. Hundreds of chickens, packed five to a wire crate, hunched in damp and stinking misery. Given rumours of bird flu, I spent about half a second ascertaining that none of the chickens were coughing, and, waving my arms furiously, asked the driver to continue. He did.

Straight to an open-air, flyblown goat butchers. I gave up and went shopping for fabric.

One of the most impressive things available on the streets was the fruit. These pomegranates (are those custard apples with them? Let me know if you’ve any idea) were the reddest, glossiest, juiciest ones I’ve ever seen. We were able to enjoy some pomegranate seeds later, sprinkled on a curry. Satsumas, still green but perfectly ripe, were for sale everywhere, and we ate some in our room.

Lurid soft drinks punctuated all the wedding buffet meals. In the interests of science I tried all of these – the pink one tasted of roses, and the green and blue were identical in taste, flavoured with sweet, sweet spices, particularly cardamom. Other dishes at the buffets were tasty, but undistinguished (which is what happens, I suppose, when you’re catering huge amounts for more than two hundred people at once and trying to keep it all warm). Waiters popped up every twenty seconds with different silver platters of spicy canapes, and were not intimidated by my photographing all the food.

The very best thing I ate was this gulab jamun – a tooth-achingly sweet dessert made from a condensed milk sponge dough wrapped around nuts and spices, particularly cardamom, soaked in sugar syrup, and sprinkled with more nuts. The sugar syrup was also spiced – you can see a strand of saffron on the ball of gulab jamun in the front of the bowl.

I wish we’d been in India for longer, and had some more time to sample some less formal foods. Normal service resumes tomorrow – my stomach seems to be behaving again.