Having just returned off the Celebrity Infinity, over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing my on-board experiences with you to give you a great taste of what to expect when booking a Celebrity cruise.
On day two of our trip we paid the $45.00 supplement to sample the Qsine speciality restaurant. Having met Heston Blumenthal on our flight into Bilbao it was quite ironic that two days later we were sat in a restaurant experiencing what I would usually be watching on one of his shows on TV.
Sat at our elaborate table with chairs like thrones & standard lamps hanging from the ceiling, we were handed our menu, an ipad. Our waiter took us through all the options of dishes we could choose from, as we were all Travel Agents he decided to bring us a sample of every dish on the menu so we did not miss anything. As if we needed an excuse to refuse food, after all it was only day two.
In an ideal world the choices would be made on the ipad and the order be transferred directly through to the kitchen, however Celebrity being Modern luxury and having the ilounge internet centre on board, this simple process (in my mind) had not yet been engineered, so your waiter would take your ipad away and see what dishes you had selected and pass the information through to the chef. Hhmmm, completely defeats the object of having an ipad menu restaurant in my opinion but hey ho! Maybe this is something they will rectify in the future.
One by one dishes began to appear at our table; thank god I’m vegetarian that’s all I can say. I had the pleasure of seeing most of the dishes, but not actually eating them, I think I would have exploded. Here’s just a few to wet your appetite……….
Goats cheese, sushi lollipops, pop corn fish & chips, greek meze, prawn cocktail, build your own burger, lava crab, steak, snails………………
And for desert build your own cupcakes, silver bullet and strawberry fields
Now don’t forgot this was all just one meal, are you ready for coffee yet? The idea is to share courses obviously and the design behind the restaurant is to present food in a new novelty way with an exciting twist of flavours.
If you are vegetarian do not pay the supplement to use this restaurant, I only did it for the experience, however there are only four courses out of twenty containing no meat.
After fifteen courses we waived out serviettes in protest, no more, you are killing us with kindness! My idea of a great dining experiences is a fantastic course that I would go back and have again & again like my ‘salmon ki saag’ in my local Indian restaurant, this was excessive food overload, I felt like that guy off man verses food who goes into American diners and has to eat the whole menu, but I’d paid £30 for the privilege. Definitely a memorable experience, but for me not of the best kind.
My colleagues left the restaurant feeling bloated an unable to move, having to retire to their cabins to let their bodies recover, me, I felt full from just watching my colleagues indulge in the copious amount of courses that kept arriving at the table.
Overall I think the concept of this restaurant is just a gimmick, not what I would envisage when booking a speciality dining experience on a five star ship.
Have Celebrity got it right or are they barking up the wrong tree when it comes to Qsine, the restaurant was in no way full, passengers were certainly not cueing at the door and they had a chef pushing the restaurant every morning outside the buffet restaurant. Surely you would only need this type of advertising if you were struggling for customers?????
Have you sampled Qsine? What do you think a hit or miss???