Who’s behind the scenes?

Restaurants on cruise ships always fascinate me. The planning that must go behind the scenes must be unbelievable and skilled, serving thousands of guests on a daily basis on a two to three hour window slot accommodating clients special requests sounds challenging. Imagine the pressure of staff having to go through these challenging shifts more than once a day and every day and for the length of their contracted work season. It sounds like a hard work and a lot of responsibility trying to offer constant excellent service. So, how does it really work on board and what kind of preparation and notice chefs must have to be able to handle such a high demand? Of course with open dining now guests can eat at whatever time they like which proves even harder to predict numbers.

Well, research plays a large role in the success, population characteristics and trends are taken into consideration when the menu is planned and depending on nationalities Chefs get an idea of what kind of time they should expect their guests.

So, this is how it works: Each cruise is planned in advance, with the executive chef and his team receiving a breakdown of the guests several weeks in advance. The chef would break down the number of guests into Nationalities. The check can then plan for Europeans who eat more fish than Americans and prefer more white wine in general. Latin Americans are later diners and tends to prefer red meat and red wine. Americans tend to eat early and want more potatoes. This all affect the ordering and preparation

With crew from some 70 different countries aboard, ethnic foods are prepared for the larger national groups, like the Filipinos, Indians and Indonesians. In addition, more general European dishes are served.

The standard of quality of food is high and you always manage to find fine cuts of meat like Angus, fresh fish lobster and oysters.

A large variety of diets and dietary requirements can be accommodated on board each ship, but it’s always worth a mention since sometime it has to be requested so the chefs can make provisions