Table for 6000 please! How do cruise chefs pull it off?

I have to say that one of the best parts of cruising is the amazing food on offer. My son is a chef and works in a busy restaurant and I know the challenges that the chefs face to cater for a full restaurant on a busy night. They have to plan how much produce to order to make sure they have enough but not too much. They have to come up with new and innovative dishes for the specials & to keep the menu fresh. They have customers who want things tweaking from the advertised dishes. They have to ensure several different dishes are all ready to go at the same time and they also have to deal with things getting sent back & having to be re-made all whilst working in a hot, sweaty and stressful kitchen & adhering to strict health & hygiene rules. So how on earth to the chefs on the huge cruise ships manage to pull this off for 6000 paying customers (not to mention the hard working crew)?

With NCL they have a freestyle dining policy on all ships meaning there are no set sittings like on most cruise lines. Executive chef, Ricardo Pinheiro who oversees all things culinary on the Norwegian Getaway says ‘With more than 4,000 passengers onboard, the challenge is not how many people that need to be served every night, but how many want to dine at the same time. He has to plan for different nationalities and take an educated guess at what food to order. This is done 3 weeks in advance of the sail date. He says “I can plan for Europeans to eat more fish than Americans, and they prefer more white wine. Latin Americans are late diners and go after more red meat and red wine. Americans tend to eat early and want more starch – especially potatoes. This all affects our ordering and preparation”

Of course these ships have a vast array of dining venues to choose from, so another tough task is knowing how many staff to place in each venue as well. I have read that some Royal Caribbean ships have headcount cameras which tally when & to which venues customers are heading towards. Who knew?

They have the challenge of only having a limited time in port, so on delivery days staff have to be up at the crack of dawn to inspect the food deliveries in case anything needs returning as they will only have a small window of time to get a replacement. They also have to look at getting replacement crockery to cover breakages.

Safety regulations mean cruise galleys can’t allow open flame (except for creme brulee torches, and even those must be used in a specific part of the galley, next to the fire extinguisher), so recipes have to be adapted to use other cooking methods. And of course working on a moving vessel presents its own unique challenges to both cooking and waiting staff.

Here are some interesting stats:

On board Carnival Dream, passengers eat of 28,730 large prawns every week6,200 cocktails and 15,000 coffees are drunk on Costa ships every week. On board MSC Fantasia class ships, 2,000 different recipes are used on a seven-day cruise. 280 bottles of free champagne, 10lbs of caviar and 120lbs of lobster are devoured on Seabourn ships  on an average 7 night cruise. On an average P&O Ventura 14-day cruise, 3,096 passengers and 1,200 crew will eat over 171,000 main meals. During an 8 night cruise on board Fred. Olsen’s Boudicca, approximately 630 litres of ice cream will be eaten.

.