Dining at Sea: Seabourn, MSC, Cunard Debut New Culinary Offerings
by James Shillinglaw /Cunard Chef Nicholas Oldroyd's creation. Photo: Cunard.
Luxury and premium cruise products are all about the food these days. So it wasn’t that surprising when three top lines last week unveiled plans to further upgrade their onboard food and beverage options.
First up, luxury line Seabourn provided additional details on a new onboard restaurant being developed by famed chef Thomas Keller, the line’s new culinary partner behind The French Laundry in Yountville, CA, and Per Se in New York City. The Grill by Thomas Keller will debut in May 2016 onboard Seabourn Quest with a menu and ambiance inspired by the classic American chophouse. The restaurant is a collaboration between three-star Michelin chef Keller and designer Adam D. Tihany.
The Grill by Thomas Keller on the Seabourn Quest. Photo: Seabourn.
The new restaurant eventually will be offered on each Seabourn vessel, including the new Seabourn Encore set to launch this December. It will move into newly renovated spaces formerly occupied by Restaurant 2 onboard the current fleet, beginning with Seabourn Quest in April and followed by Seabourn Sojourn and Seabourn Odyssey during scheduled dry dock periods. Seabourn Ovation will offer The Grill by Thomas Keller when it is launched in spring 2018.
Seabourn also has partnered with top mixologist Brian Van Flandern to transform the onboard spirits across its entire fleet with upgraded bar offerings, new cocktail menus, and more. Van Flandern has been elevating the bar ingredients available onboard, handcrafting classic cocktails, educating and training the bar staff across the Seabourn fleet. He will also create a menu of cocktails exclusive to the line. Van Flandern, who has been called “America’s Top Mixologist” by the Food Network, was part of the opening team in 2004 for Keller's restaurant Per Se in New York City as head barman.
In other news at last week’s Seatrade conference, MSC Cruises unveiled a new partnership with Roy Yamaguchi, a Japanese-American celebrity chef from Hawaii, who will introduce a specialty pan-Asian restaurant on board the line’s new ship, MSC Seaside. MSC already has partnerships with three other award-winning chefs—Carlo Cracco, who specializes in Italian food; Jean-Philippe Maury, a famed French pastry chef; and Jereme Leung, a famed Chinese chef.
Chef Yamaguchi's Sea Bass. Photo: MSC.
Chef Yamaguchi will have a dedicated specialty restaurant onboard MSC Seaside, which will come into service in December 2017 and sail year-round from Miami to the Caribbean. He will be personally involved in conceptualizing and designing every element of the new pan-Asian restaurant. This includes creating the recipes and menus, selecting the chinaware to enhance the dishes, choosing music to create the right ambience, deciding the perfect wines to complement the food, and even picking out the paper stock for the menus.
In addition to gourmet pan-Asian style dishes, the new restaurant will include a sushi, sashimi, and raw bar, as well as a space with teppanyaki grills in which guests will be able to enjoy a variety of cooking styles, from traditional Japanese to Malaysian to Thai Korean. Yamaguchi is the founder of 30 Roy’s Restaurants, including 28 in the United States, one in Guam, and one in Okinawa, Japan. He has also hosted six seasons of the TV show "Hawaii Cooks with Roy Yamaguchi," seen in more than 60 countries.
Finally, Cunard unveiled new culinary plans as part of its “remastering” of the Queen Mary 2, which it is calling the most significant refit ever undertaken by the line. Cunard’s twin executive chefs, Nicholas and Mark Oldroyd, are working together on developing new menus and further enhancing the ship’s fine dining, part of a culinary revamp of menus across the fleet.