Orlando Magical Dining Month

Today marks the last day of Orlando Magical Dining Month (although last night was our last foray, since tonight we’re going to “First Bites,” the opening event in the Epcot Food and Wine Festival). During September, a wide array of Orlando restaurants offered a special three course dinner for $30. At some of them it was quite a deal. Although we were out of town for most of the month, we did have a chance to try Morton’s, Nine 18, Big Fin, The Boheme and Ocean Prime. (We also went to Everglades for a wine dinner and Season’s 52 for lunch, but not as part of this event.) We enjoyed all of them, but Big Fin (the only one new to us) is the place that sticks in our memory. We liked the casual atmosphere, good food with a Cajun twist, and friendly service.

Wine Syndicate – 1961 Bordeaux

Our Wine Syndicate group met Saturday at the Bull & Bear in the Waldorf Astoria. It was one of our best tastings ever, focusing on the 1961 Bordeaux vintage, perhaps the best of the century. The two vintages of Chateau Haut Brion were the overwhelming favorites, with the 1961 Haut Brion widely being awarded 100 points and scoring a unanimous first place. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened. The chef really rose to the occasion, preparing a tasting menu that outdid the fancy Gordon Ramsay restaurants we recently visited in London. Quite a surprise, coming from a steakhouse!

The Wines:

1966 Ch Pichon Lalande,
1966 Ch Montrose,
1961 Ch Haut Brion,
1962 Ch Pichon Baron,
1961 Ch Lynch Bages,
1962 Ch Margaux,
1961 Ch Lafite (tenth),
1961 Ch Mouton Rothschild,
1966 Ch Haut Brion

Everglades at the Rosen – Four Seasons of the Vine

Martin and I (Linda has a cold) went to the periodic Vine & Dine event at the Everglades restaurant at the Rosen. They always do a nice job at these events, which allow the chef to experiment outside of his normal menu. I like the venue, because the group of about forty guests is divided into four or five long tables, which allows you to meet some other wine and food enthusiasts, but avoids the giant round table syndrome that bogs down a lot of social events. Wines were provided by Southern Wine & Spirits, and consisted of a refreshing Elderflower champagne cocktail (made with Proseco, elderflower liqueur and a twist of lemon), a very good Chilean Chardonnay, a Sardinian Vermentino, Argentine Malbec and a Moscato d’Asti Proseco. The food was themed after the four seasons: asparagus, shellfish, pheasant, snow eggs. The dessert of snow eggs was the best; they are balls of meringue that have been poached rather than baked, served with a delicious and complex Creme Anglaise. A fun event. The next one is on my birthday.

Chez Josephine

After the always superb lunch at Jean Georges (perhaps my favorite restaurant in the world), we strolled down Broadway, which becomes a giant flea market closed to traffic on Saturdays. Then, in the evening, on the spur of the moment, we went to the revival of La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer. It was fun, as always, but I wasn’t sure it deserved its Tonys; I couldn’t help thinking that parts of the Trinity High School production had been better!

For dinner we walked to Hell’s Kitchen and had an nice French meal in the darkly romantic and jazzy Chez Josephine‘s, with live piano and trumpet jazz. Occasionally a patron would play a set; an elderly black woman really impressed with her sultry voice and lightning riffs.

Sunday morning our three-week adventure came to an end, with Dani winging her way back to Chicago and Linda and I headed back to Orlando.

Michelangelo Hotel

When we saw The Addams Family in Chicago during its test run, the songs were good, but the show was pretty poor. So poor we couldn’t imagine how it made it to Broadway (admittedly we saw it when its star, Nathan Lane was out sick). So, gluttons for punishment, we decided to see it on Broadway. I purchased tickets early enough that even though the theatre was sold out, we had front row seats.

From the first note it was clear that the entire show had been reworked. The first act was completely rewritten, with lame numbers cut, and an almost entirely new book. A new plot (one that actually made sense) had replaced much of the old, with The Addams Family now aware that they are strange, and attempting to be normal for one night (and failing miserably, of course). The songs mostly remained. The audience loved it, and certainly we loved the first act. Less work had been done on the second act, so the show only ended up being good, not great, but it was an amazing improvement. And Nathan Lane is indeed a comedic genius.

Afterward we went to our traditional post-theatre dinner at Sardi’s, which never changes.

I’m impressed with our hotel, The Michelangelo.

A large hallway connects the bedroom and living room.

It’s the nicest we’ve stayed at in the theatre district, with upscale furnishings in the lobby and rooms, and a very spacious one bedroom suite at a reasonable price. It’s just off 7th Avenue at 51st street, so an easy walk to all the theatres and to Columbus Circle for our lunch at Jean Georges.

New York

Just as the sun began to rise we entered New York harbor and a tug boat escorted us past the Statue of Liberty. By 7AM we were docked in Brooklyn. After clearing out of our cabin, we breakfasted in the dining room (for the first time) and then spent a couple of pleasant hours reading and waiting for our disembarkation time in the Skywalker Lounge on deck 16. Oddly, we had the place to ourselves, even though it afforded the best view in all of New York, from a movable high rise that would be there for only ten hours!

This is a photo taken with the iPhone 4 camera, as were about half the photos in this journal. What a terrific upgrade it is.

 

Random Thoughts About This Cruise

On the large Princess ships you don’t want a cabin below Baha deck, because Caribe and Dolphin balconies stick out progressively farther, so there’s no shade and no cover from the rain.

If you have two cabins, you want them on opposite sides of the ship, for both views, but if you have only one, you want it on the starboard (right) side during an east to west voyage, because that’s where the view is. In any event, you want your cabin toward the front, where there is much less vibration.

The large Princess ships offer two cover charge restaurants in addition to the dining rooms: Sabatini’s and The Crown Grill. Consider the cover charge restaurants as a way to get away from the commotion of the dining room. You’re not going to get a great steak at Crown Grill (in fact, the lamb carpaccio and mussels are the highlights) and you’re not going to get great Italian food at Sabatini’s (the Fetuccine Alfredo in the dining room is much better). While the dining room food is definitely middle brow, it’s often just as good as at these cover charge restaurants. But the dining room can be noisy, and the cover charge restaurants offer a respite. On the other hand, making a late reservation in the dining room — say 8 or even 8:30 works just about as well, at no extra cost. Still it’s worth trying the cover charge restaurants at least once each.

A transatlantic cruise from east to west lets you take advantage of the time change. Every day or two you get an extra hour, which makes early morning shore excursions a lot easier to handle.

St. John’s, Newfoundland

We awoke to find our ship had somehow managed to either back into or turn around in The Narrows that fronts State Street, the main street of St. John’s, and North America’s oldest commercial street. One of the oddest things about St. Johns is that it’s 30 minutes off from the rest of the world. The clocks here are one and a half hours ahead of east coast time.

Our five hour shore excursion wasn’t particularly well selected, with two hours on a bus and two hours on a small boat in nine foot seas to spend ten minutes looking at puffins from a hundred yards away.

Their activity was interesting, though. They seem to spend most of the day trying to fake out the seagulls running interference at the entrances to their burrows. The gulls make a living by stealing fish from the puffins before they can carry it down their five foot deep tunnels to feed their chick.

On the way back to St. John’s we made two very brief stops, one at pretty Petty Harbour, where a stream competes with the surf for governance of the tiny boat harbor, the other at Point Spear, easternmost place in North America. At Point Spear there is a lighthouse that has been tended by the same family for almost 200 years, and also the remains of a WWII artillery bunker.

Back at St. John’s we had an excellent late lunch at Bianca’s, a French restaurant that reminded us how mediocre the food has been for the past ten days!

Then it was time to squeeze our way back through The Narrows and out into the North Atlantic, where we watched the pilot take his life in his hands leaping from The Crown Princess to his tiny boat being tossed in twelve foot seas.

 

Sea Days

This voyage includes many days at sea. With six days between Greenland and New York, and only one port in between, we’re in no great hurry, cruising along at 15 knots. The weather has been pleasant, with billowing clouds like those in a water color painting, and the only night that really required sea legs was the first one out of Quaqortoq, when the seas were fifteen feet and the spray occasionally hit our deck nine balcony. It didn’t dissuade the ballroom dancers, though, who maintained their cha-chas; we tried it on a calmer night and still found it challenging.

Dani has spent much of her time reading, and has exhausted the supply of books she brought with her. She’s also making a friendship bracelet, which takes a lot more time than you’d think. She’s taken advantage of the flock of on-board paparazzi to have some nice portraits taken.

Linda spends her mornings on the treadmill in the gym, where she works off 750 calories, the equivalent of about five minutes in the dining room. She spends her evenings listening to Eric Stone, the piano player and singer in Crooner’s bar. He was in the original cast of A Chorus Line on Broadway, and his show each night packs in several hours of Broadway tunes (which he performs as mini-shows including commentary and him singing all the parts) and trivia games. She’s also the only gambler among us. She’s experimenting with ways to alter the rate at which you lose money in the casino.

I’ve spent the week with a cold, so other than lunches and dinners and a few hours in Greenland, I haven’t done much. It was an expensive struggle to keep up with the students in my writing classes during the dense cloud cover before we reached Greenland. Weather had a much more deleterious effect on the Internet than did the extreme northern latitude. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, but mostly from saved Instapaper articles on my iPhone. Also Kindl books on the iPad, but the iPad has been less useful than expected. In Evanston it was with me everywhere in the condo, but here on the ship, where it takes several minutes to log in to the Internet and then costs thirty-five cents a minute to stay connected, it’s no longer the instantaneous reference and information tool that makes it valuable. So I’ve mostly used Linda’s laptop because I can quickly open many browser windows at once, load them, and then log off.

The Weird World of Princess Cruises Food

I’m baffled by the mediocrity on-board the middle-brow cruise lines such as Princess. It’s not from a lack of quality ingredients: the ships hold produces amazingly fresh (albeit often previously frozen) lobster tails, lamb chops, beef, fruits and vegetables through every day of a two-week cruise. And it’s not due to a lack of talent on board: the kitchen staff is capable of producing a few (very few) truly good dishes, when given the proper recipes. No, the problem seems to be an intentional decision by the corporate office in California to produce weird food. Here are a few of the more obvious examples:

Fish “Tacos”

Everywhere Else:
Corn tortilla, fish, onions, cilantro, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, cheese.

On Princess:
Flour tortilla containing fish atop a bowl of flavorless kraut-like substance and corn niblets.

Shrimp “Fra Diavolo”

Everywhere Else:
Shrimp with a zesty marinara sauce (exactly how it’s described on the Princess menu) on a bed of linguini.

On Princess:
Shrimp coated with bland cream of tomato soup next to bland white rice.

Pasta e Fagiole

Everywhere Else:
Minestrone soup with grains of pasta

On Princess:
A cross between Tuscan bean soup and enchilada sauce.

“Montecristo” Sandwich

Everywhere Else:
Slices of ham, turkey and Swiss cheese on bread, battered and deep fried, served with jam.

On Princess:
Slices of ham and turkey (or possibly chicken) on French toast, served with shrimp sauce (WTF?!)

In each of these cases, the normal ingredients were readily available, and often appeared in other dishes. For example, cilantro, usually a Mexican staple, kept showing up in the Italian food.

And there are a few noteworthy dishes (rare enough to list here, in their entirety): the lamb carpaccio at Crown Grill, Mussels in garlic broth at Crown Grill, the brown butter at Sabatini’s, guacamole and tortilla chips in the dining room, and the chocolate and almond croissants at The International Cafe (when fresh — in fact, all the baked goods are well made, just bland.)

It’s true that the Executive Chef is talentless. The foie gras pate he spent the day making for the chef’s table dinner was nothing so much as baby food. But this food is constant across the entire cruise line. In short, they’re making it this way on purpose. Why that is, baffles me.

You can’t blame it on the international crew, or international tastes. The line is American owned, managed and the vast majority of passengers are Americans. They know what goes on a hamburger or hot dog. Just watch them, up at the grill by the pool looking for onions, pickle relish and French’s mustard. They won’t find them. Just mayonnaise, ketchup and Dijon. Perhaps the Princess management needs to get out more, and visit some exotic restaurants. Like Red Lobster and McDonald’s.

Iceberg

"Ice, dead ahead, Captain."

Cruising off the coast off Greenland we spotted several things: A large iceberg, whales (actually didn’t see these, but heard reports), and a bright object in the sky; we hear it’s called the sun.

Passing the Iceberg

I liked this juxtaposition of Iceberg and its mortal enemy, Hot Tub:

Ahhh… nothing like fresh caught iceberg:

Crown Princess Chef’s Table

We had an interesting experience tonight after a quiet day at sea. The Crown Princess Chef’s table is a dinner for twelve offered three times during the cruise. It begins with a tour of the kitchen conducted by the ship’s food and beverage director and the head chef.

There are eleven kitchens on The Crown Princess, including five massive ones. We suited up in white smocks and washed our hands, then toured the various prep stations. Considering the over 500 employees involved in food and beverage service, the environment was surprisingly calm, even though it was dinner time. In an out of the way corner of the kitchen we had Heidseck Champagne and several appetizer courses (lobster cocktail, quiche, foie gras, caviar), then adjourned to a table in the dinning room for carpaccio, lobster risotto, a main course of veal shank, beef and lobster tails, cheese, panecotta and cookies. Yes, there was a lot of food! Also Ferrari Carano Chardonnay, Louis Latour Pouilly Fuisse, and a homemade Limoncello.

The event illustrated what Princess does well and does poorly. Admittedly we are spoiled, having done chef’s tables around the world, and admittedly our companions were very impressed with the food, one couple declaring it was better than they’d had at high end restaurants in Paris. But let’s face it, it was, in Dani’s words, “Outback tries to do a chef’s table.” The ingredients are good, aside from the fact that they all have to have been frozen, but  flavors never come together to create anything more than the sum of the individual components. Yet the service was gracious, almost to the point of being ingratiating, and they gave the ladies roses, very expensive cookbooks, and even took couple and group portraits which they printed and distributed at the end of the meal. On the whole a very interesting, if not culinary, experience.

Not Quite Iceland

It looks like this is the closest we’re going to get to Iceland. Although we can’t really detect it on the ship, apparently there is a 35 knot wind blowing across the harbor entrance, which makes it impossible to dock. So another port scratched off the itinerary.

Clouds approaching Iceland
Reading on the balcony in Iceland
A bumpy ride for the pilot
One third (!) of the ship's corridor

Entertainment

Years ago we sailed on the Norway (once the liner The France) and they did complete Broadway shows in their theatre. That’s probably the last time I really enjoyed a cruise ships entertainment program. Usually I just skip it. Linda tried one show on this ship and came to the same conclusion.

But this ship did have a lounge pianist, Eric Stone, who was in the original cast of A Chorus Line, and he was very good. Linda spent every night there. If you asked for a Broadway tune he would do a ten minute version of the whole show, with explanations of the plot!

A highlight of this cruise was that John Maxtone-Graham was on board, and delivered five very entertaining lectures about the history of ocean liners. I made sure not to miss any of those.

At Sea

Somewhere in the North Atlantic. 15 foot swells, 35 knot gusts, but it’s a big ship, so not too rocky. Running late because the storm kept us in dull Dublin 24 hours extra, missing Belfast completely. Scheduled to get into Reyjavik late, at 2pm tomorrow, but hopefully enough time for our 6 hour tour.

Nowhere

We were supposed to be in Belfast today, but due to a 25 knot wind with 50 knot gusts and rain we stayed in Dublin overnight, and will depart for Iceland in stormy weather, skipping Belfast. Too bad, as I wanted to tick Northern Ireland off my list of countries visited.

Dublin

We visited Dublin two years ago on our Ireland/Scotland/England tour, and I tried hard to like the city, but it just never clicked for me. I had the same experience (and the same dreary, drizzly weather) this time. Pubs, a river with nice bridges, touristy shops, more pubs. Rain.

 

Cornwall

We awoke in the harbor at Fallmouth and tendered over (a slow process because of the small dock) for an hour drive to Lizard, the southernmost point of England. There we took a five-mile two-hour coastal hike along the perilous cliffs of Cornwall. Seeing the caves, smugglers’ lairs, and rocks where hundred of ships have wrecked reminded us of Poldark.

After a superb fish and chips lunch at The Witch’s Ball we retraced our steps and returned to the ship for rest, showers, and the first formal night, where we opted for the other cover charge restaurant, Crown Grill.

Southampton

Today we bid farewell to London, and its extraordinarily nice weather during this week of gastronomic exploration.

We had a painless transfer by private car to Southampton, a 90 minute drive south. The boarding procedures in the new terminal were quite efficient, and soon we were settled into two cabins. Unfortunately, the two cabins are about a quarter of a mile apart (and that isn’t really hyperbole). Because Dani isn’t twenty-one, Linda and she are technically sharing an outside cabin and I have a mini suite. I have to say that there isn’t a tremendous difference between them, space-wise or in their outfitting.

Since we’re old hands at this cruise thing, the first thing we did was get on the phone and reserve tables at the various specialty restaurants for about half the nights of the cruise. (As it turned out this was unnecessary, as on this cruise the specialty restaurants were not well attended.)

There’s a new event, a chef’s table that sounds interesting.

After the traditional lifeboat drill (which is indoors in the lounges these days) we set sail for the southwestern tip of the UK.

For dinner American Express comped us into Sabatini’s, the Italian specialty restaurant on all Princess ships, and we had a nice meal (and a lovely bottle of Ornellaia) with a sweet server named Yana.

L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon

We had lunch at Benares, an Indian restaurant near our hotel. It’s run by a chef with one Michelin star. I was a bit disappointed, as I didn’t really find the food to be the creative twist on Indian cuisine we’d been promised, but Dani and Linda liked theirs. The place is a neat two story building off Berkeley Square with a lily pond on the second floor.

We finished our London stay with a visit to L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Covent Garden. It was easily the best meal of the trip. It’s a dark place with spotlights on the few bar-height tables; most of the seating is at what looks like it was once a sushi bar, but since there were three of us we got a nice table. Service was great (the waiter really reminded us of a twenty-something Henry). Each of the three courses I had were the best version of that dish I’ve encountered: scallop ceviche, caramelized foie gras with cherries and lime bits, and quail. I’m glad we saved this for last, as it blew away Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, and the scallop put Nobu to shame.

Love Never Dies But This Tooth Did

For the past month I’ve had sinus headaches and jaw aches, but when I went to my dentist at Starbase Dental last week he couldn’t identify a particular tooth that was the problem. He prescribed antibiotics and told me to check back after vacation. But the problem has been getting worse, with hot or cold foods causing a headache. The trouble is that nothing hurts except when I’m having the problem, which occurs only every few hours (or as soon as I lie down). Now I’m fairly sure the cause was my upper left wisdom tooth because that one hurt (but only when I was having a headache) if I wiggled it.

So rather than put up with another three weeks of sleep deprivation and headaches, today I went to the Carnaby Street Dentist and had it pulled. What a great place that is, with really friendly people; Sarah, who offered me several options, pulled it with absolutely no pain. She sent me off with hand-written instructions and some antibiotics. I’m sure it will hurt again later, but right now my head feels better than it has in a month.

Dani likes this sign because it’s the name of a Star Trek DS9 character. Well, the character’s name is Curzon Dax, not Curzon Plaza.

Earlier today we went to lunch at Nobu, the famous sushi place. We had… sushi. It was… sushi. Hmmm…. I must be missing something. Why is this famous?

Tonight we had theatre tickets to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new show, Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. (Full disclosure: I’ve always thought that Phantom was a dumb show with good music and staging.) In this version the Phantom has moved to New York’s Coney Island, and guess who happens to also show up there? This was an odd show that has proven to be unpopular, as shown by the half empty theatre. Defying the odds, I liked it the best of the three of us. The voices were superb, much better than any other Phantom production I’ve seen. Dani hated the music, but I thought most of the second half was very good. The problem is that the first act sucks dead toads. Then, weirdly, the second act manages to tell a more cohesive story than Phantom ever did. Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy. Between that and the rework needed on the first act, we’re betting it never opens on Broadway. Then again, we made the same bet about The Addams Family.

We had a late supper at Clos Maggiore in the theatre district, a romantic little restaurant with good food, a fantastic winelist and disjointed service. Then home to bed, my toothlessness still not a problem. Yay!