Surviving the Cruise Ship Buffet
Anchors aweigh! (Photo: kansasphoto/Flicker)
Food, glorious food — it’s one
of the top reasons people go on cruises. In one week, the cruise ship
the Queen Mary 2 serves 16,000 meals a day, including 50 tons of fruit
and vegetables, eight tons of poultry, 13 tons of fish and seafood, two
tons of cheese and dairy, two tons of sugar, 5,000 gallons of milk,
32,400 eggs, and more, using 610 miles of plastic wrap and 87,000 pieces
of glassware and china.
Though many people love the
experience of fine dining in the so-called dress-up dining room, the
24-hour buffet is a great quick, casual option — if you know how to
navigate it. When it comes to cruise buffets, there’s a right way and a
wrong way to do them. Here are some of my best buffet tips, culled from
decades of cruising.
Breakfast
Get your scrambled eggs from the omelet station. (Photo: Bev Sykes/Flickr)
One of the most important things
to know about eating at a cruise buffet is what to stay away from. At
breakfast, it’s the static, chafing-dish scrambled eggs. It may seem
quick and easy to just scoop some up — after all, they’re already
prepared, and really, how bad could they be on a fancy cruise, right?
Wrong. They’re made hours before they are put out and are still almost
raw even when they hit the buffet. The eggs are scrambled lightly and
then left to cook via the heat from the hot station. On the other hand,
omelets are one of the things you’ll find made to order at the buffet,
so ask the omelet cook to make you a quick scramble instead — he’s already got the eggs. That way you
know you’re eating fresh, fully cooked eggs. (Incidentally, eggs
Benedict is always done as you order and usually excellent.)
If you’re not an egg person, you
can also get fresh pancakes and waffles — again, forget those nasty
ones that are somehow simultaneously crusty and soggy from sitting in
the serving dish. Butter won’t even melt on them. If you walk over to
the cafeteria and nicely ask the cook to give you some pancakes off the
griddle, you’ll be much happier with the result.
Lunch
Don’t let them overly season your stir-fry with soy sauce. (Photo: Thinkstock)
Salads and stir-fry are big at
the cruise buffet lunch. Though the stir-fries are made to order, the
cooks tend to overuse soy sauce, so ask them to go easy. As for the
salads, watch out for the raw onions — the self-serve lettuce always
seem to be overloaded with them.
Beware of onions on the salad bar. (Photo: Thinkstock)
Another lunch option to be careful of is the smoked salmon. (It’s on all salad and breakfast buffets.) If the
edges are beginning to curl or are slightly brown, stay away. Believe
me, I know. There was that time cruising to Turks and Caicos … ew.
Dinner
Don’t be afraid to speak up at the pasta station. (Photo: Thinkstock)
Important fact: They have the
same dinner entrées on the Lido-deck buffet as they do in the dress-up
dining room. Same food, supereasy. If you’re not into the chafing-dish
options, you can also have a steak cooked to order. But beware: The
quality of the meat used at the buffet is not as good as the meat used
for the main dining room.
Other important dinner tips? If you’re a fan of fish, stick to whatever fish they’re cooking to order.
And who doesn’t love an
all-you-can-eat pasta dinner? You at the cruise buffet if you order
correctly. Though the pasta dish is put together in front of you, the
pasta itself is precooked. When you order your noodles, the cook will
put them in a strainer and submerge them in hot water to warm them while
finishing the sauces. The problem is the straining of the noodles: The
cook will lift them out, give them a shake, and throw them in the pan
with the sauce — and you will end up with a watery mess. If you’re
willing to speak up and ask for a better strain or for the sauce to be
thickened, then pasta is a good option. If you do choose pasta, do it
the day after the sit-down dining room serves meat — they take the
leftover high-quality meat and throw it into sauces. And ask the cook to
add some marinated veggies from the pizza station rather than the raw
ones they use, since they never seem to cook properly.
Dessert
Go wild at the dessert bar. Just avoid the cake. (Photo: Alpha/Flickr)
Sweets are one of the best parts
of the buffet (just make sure the plates holding the desserts are on
ice). Puff pastries, petits fours, crème brûlée, and the like all hold
up better than cake, which dries out quickly. So pile on the goodies —
don’t forget the whipped cream! — and you can even take your dessert to
your cabin if you like.
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