San Diego Jewish World editor Donald H. Harrison recently returned from a roundtrip cruise to Hawaii. This is the eighth and final article resulting from that voyage.
By Donald H. Harrison
ABOARD MS ZAANDAM — The amount of food served on a cruise ship is legendary. It’s the source of diet jokes, worries, and even humorous prayers. A passenger who attended Roman Catholic services aboard the ship passed onto me a copy of this reading:
We pray our stomachs forgive us for all our meals and still allow us room for pizza and the midnight buffet; Permit us to go unnoticed when we order two entrees and three desserts and then ask for Sweet and Low for our coffee.
Even the ships poke subtle fun at themselves. On Holland America Line’s Zaandam, for example, the intra-ship phone number to call Food Service is 88. That’s “atey-ate.”
One may go to the Lido Deck (Deck 8, um, “Ate”) for breakfast beginning at 6 a.m., or if one is still reclined, in-cabin breakfast is available, so long as you have placed your menu choices outside your cabin door by 2 a.m.
That menu offers the choice of six juices; six fresh fruit choices; two yogurts; nine kinds of bread products, yes including a bagel; six kinds of preserves; nine kinds of cereals, including Swiss-style Mueslix; eggs or eggbeaters in the usual styles and with the usual meat accompaniments; and, of course, beverages. For eating surfaces, most cabins have desks as well as a little table that can be placed in front of the couch.
“The food in the cabin was hot and on time,” commented passenger Debbie Clarke of Grandview Beach, Saskatchewan. “The food was good.”
The variety is far greater upstairs on the Lido, where for breakfast one can have omelets or eggs in any style prepared as you watch, and additionally there are such favorites as French toast, pancakes and waffles. Here one might add to the bagel some lox and cream cheese — an option that Nancy and I, wanting to keep faith with our landsmen, exercised on several occasions.
On the first two days of any cruise, to guard against any gastrointestinal illness passengers may inadvertently have carried onto the ship from their homes, wait staff wearing plastic gloves select the passengers’ choices from the buffet and hand it to them. This is an important health measure.
A notice from the ship explained that these diseases “generally run their course within 24-48 hours.” They are “spread person-to-person rather than through the ship’s food or water supply. This means, for example, that a person could become ill by touching a surface that had previously been touched by someone who was ill, and then eating a sandwich or finger food.”
The notice pointed out that “hand sanitizers are located around the ship. Please use them often, especially before eating and upon return to the vessel from your time ashore.”
If passengers are dining alone, often they will carry their food items to an empty table, perhaps with a view of the sea, but before too long, as tables fill up, other passengers will ask if it’s okay to join them. Typically, a round of such questions as “where are you from?” or “how are you enjoying the cruise?” may very soon lead to shipboard acquaintanceships. Communities are formed very quickly at sea.
Lunch in the Lido offers similar camaraderie. The luncheon menu includes such delights as vegetarian and fish sushi rolls, salads, sandwiches with freshly carved meats, as well as Asian and Italian selections. “I enjoyed the variety and the service,” commented Jerry Leo of Ridge, N.Y., a community on Long Island.
Not everyone opts for the Lido Restaurant, however; because just beyond the dining room’s doors is the swimming pool area, where one can get from the Terrace Grill such comfort foods as hotdogs, hamburgers, and pizza, or a full Mexican buffet with build-your-own tacos with plenty of beef, chicken, that other treif meat (rhymes with cork), cheeses, and salsa selections.
“The Terrace Grill was good; we loved the pizza,” reported Barbara Hoskins of Newbury, England.
Glasses of iced tea, lemonade and coffee are readily available at most dining locations. On the other hand, if you want a soda — such as Coca Cola — it has to be purchased just as beers, wines and hard liquors are. Zaandam offers for $25 a soda card with which passengers may purchase $50 worth of sodas (a two-for-one deal), which I thought I would surely consume over 14 days. In fact, there was money left on the card, which was refunded to me at the time of settling the bill.
The beer selections were good. Ian Harkness, a nuclear power plant engineer whose first career was as a brewery worker in England, favored the Stella Artois from Belgium. I tried that, and in honor of table mate Greg Clarke, a retired firefighter, I also sampled a Moulson from Canada, but I found myself returning to Corona, a Mexican favorite usually served with a piece of lime.
Of course, dinners aboard cruise ships are what people think about most often when recollecting their gastronomic adventures. The Zaandam features a two-story dining room named The Rotterdam (as indeed another of the Holland America Line ships also is named). There is a 5:45 p.m. early seating and an 8 p.m. late seating for people who desire to dine at the same table with the same people, and an any-time seating beginning at 5:15 p.m. for those who would like to change their dining times and companions.
Nancy and I chose the late seating, at which we had the pleasure of the company of the Clarkes from Canada and the Harkness/ Hoskins party from England. Our waiter, assistant waiter, wine steward and tables captain all were from Indonesia, and, notwithstanding the wide variety of our English-language accents, they quickly learned our dining preferences. A carafe of white wine was brought to Ian Harkness almost the moment he sat down to dinner; the waiters knew that Debbie Clarke preferred the onion soup to any other, and they also quickly learned that one of my peculiarities is that when I pepper my food, it is very lightly, as in only three turns of the crank.
Most meals were four-course affairs, with an appetizer, a soup or salad, an entree, and dessert.
“Dinners in the restaurant on the whole were very good and service was excellent,” commented Barbara Harkness, a local government worker in England. “The Rotterdam meals were good; the service was friendly and good,” added Debbie Clarke, a cardiology technician. Retired salesman Jerry Leo said of the dinners: “Great choices and generally served with a smile.”
One happily could have taken all of one’s dinners in the Rotterdam Dining Room, but there were three specialty restaurants that one could sample in addition — each at an additional fee. Nancy and I tried them all.
The first was the Canaletto Restaurant, which is located in a distinct section of the Lido Restaurant. Here Nancy and I chose as entrees the chicken cacciatore al forno and osso buco respectively. Nancy’s chicken was “baked in garlic with white wine and roma tomatoes,” and presented with carmelized carrots and parmesan polenta. My tender veal shanks were “braised in a vegetable tomato broth” and served with potato and gnocchi.
Our tablemate Barbara rated the Canaletto as just “okay,” whereas Nancy and I thought it was well above average. Perhaps the difference in opinion lies in the fact that England is so much closer to Italy than our hometown of San Diego is. A surprise post-dessert serving of cotton candy at our Canaletto table topped off the evening in sweet (and gooey) fashion.
On another evening, six of us went to the Pinnacle Grill, where our Rotterdam Dining Room tablemates were kind enough to join us and help Nancy and me to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary.
The Grill occupies its own space in a room with subdued lighting on the Promenade Deck (4th Deck) close to the Wajang Theatre, where they showed first-run movies throughout the cruise. (We watched Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” one night). The Pinnacle Grill’s menu asserts that the restaurant features “top quality, hand-selected, Sterling Silver premium beef” and that further, the restaurant uses its “own special collection of seasoned rubs to add intriguing dimensions of flavor and our 1,600-degree grill helps seal in the juices.”
The meat was indeed more tender than what we were used to at the Rotterdam Dining Room, and the china and silver service were finer. Although it is hard to believe that it would be possible, the waiters were even more attentive — possibly because they had fewer tables to serve. They made Caesar Salad table side, and pleased Nancy with the steak and me with the lamb chops. Debbie Clarke said the food was grilled just as she requested. Jerry Leo, who went on another evening, described the experience as “great ambiance, wonderful presentation of the food.”
On just one night during the cruise, the Pinnacle Grille is converted into Le Cirque French Restaurant, with a complete menu change and a higher add-on price. Nancy and I chose chateaubriand, hoping to re-capture a special dinner we had in Victoria, British Columbia, on our honeymoon. But, though Le Cirque’s chateaubriand was okay, it didn’t come close to what we had that night at Hy’s Steak House. I’m afraid other passengers were similarly uninspired by Le Cirque. Said Jerry Leo, a veteran cruiser: “As far as I was concerned, I did not think this option was necessary.”
Besides the restaurants, there are numerous bars and lounges aboard the ship. “We enjoyed the entertainment in each area,” commented Debbie Clarke. “The Crow’s Nest (located on the Sports Deck overlooking the bow of the ship) was a pleasant change from the Lido area.”
Overall, on a cruise, one eats well, perhaps too well, and is lulled by the ship’s motion and by live music in the lounges into a feeling of great mellowness and relaxation. And isn’t that what vacations are really all about?
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com