A Meal to Die For!

While we’re at sea, writing a post every three days is about right.  However, now that we’re visiting a different port every day, three days is way too long.  Yesterday we were in Cobh, Ireland, and today we’ve been in Cornwall. But, before we talk about the ports, we have to tell you about one of the greatest dinners we have ever had!!!

Since we cruised last year, Princess has come up with a new wrinkle; a “Chef’s Table” for a few guests.  They hold it three or four times on a cruise of this length, and the maximum number of guests for each event is 12.  You can’t sign up for it until you are on the ship, so as soon as we got to our cabins, our wonderful friend, Judy, was on the phone with the dining room, trying to grab a reservation for our group of nine.  She was told that the attendees would be chosen by lottery, but that if we were chosen, all of us could go.  We didn’t hear anything for five or six days, when we all got invitations for Friday night.  Yippee!!!

The girls with Executive Chef Giuseppe

At 7PM on Friday, we gathered in the atrium where we were met by a dining room steward who had our names, cabin numbers and photos, and checked us in.  We were led to a coat rack by the ship’s Maître d’ where we all donned lab coats and entered the galley (kitchen).  The next step was to wash our hands like we were about to perform surgery.  They are very serious about sanitation on the ship.  We’ve taken galley tours on previous trips, but they were always when the galley was between meals, and very quiet.  This tour, which was led by the ship’s Executive Chef, began right in the middle of dinner service, and while it was calm and orderly, there was a bit of bustle of servers throughout the galley.  

After our tour, we retreated to a quiet corner where we were served champagne and several “WOW” appetizers, including a lobster margarita, tuna tartar, a fontina cheese quiche with truffles, and caviar served on new potatoes, all of this in the company of the Executive Chef and the ship’s Captain.

After we’d had our fill of the appetizers, we were escorted through the dining room back to the coat rack where we shed our lab jackets, then proceeded back into the dining room led by the chef.  We were seated at a beautifully decorated table, complete with flowers, candles and crystal wine glasses.  The rest of the dinner was kind of a blur, but it included asparagus risotto with lobster tails, lemon sorbet with lemoncello marinated strawberries (this was served as a “palette cleanser”), roasted veal shank served, as the chef said, with a side of beef tenderloin in a green peppercorn sauce.  It was accompanied by roasted potatoes trimmed in the shape of mushrooms and fresh vegetables.  If that wasn’t enough, we finished with baked camembert in a port wine reduction, a passion fruit dome cake with a whiskey -soaked raspberry soft center and a mango glaze, served with a decorative sugar sculpture that was also edible.  Of course, the ship’s sommelier served fabulous wines throughout the meal.

The meal was an extra charge of course, but the cost was about the same as eating out at a nice restaurant with a bottle of wine at home, and as we said earlier, it was spectacular!

We’ll post pictures of the dishes as a web album shortly and link it to our post.  In the meantime, we’ll start writing about the two ports we visited so we don’t get too far behind.