CRUISE CUISINE
Dishes from Queen’s and Princess Grill. Portrait at top – Executive Chef James Abhilash. Below Darran Ridley, Chef de Cuisine, Queen’s Grill.
restaurants, THE CHEF’S GALLEY, THE CARVERY, LA PIAZZA and THE LOTUS, the latter offering Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Indian fare.
T
he aforementioned Britannia Grill is the ship’s main dining room, which can accommodate up to 1,300 pas-
sengers and yet, given its sheer scale, does not feel at all crowded. On a typical six-day transatlantic cross- ing, there is just about enough time for me to give each venue a try. Service in the formal dining rooms starts and ends early – geared to the American palate – from 6.30 to 9am. The King’s Court runs on later, and for night birds (or if you’re on your way back from the nightclub!), there are late snacks available from 11pm to 4am in La Piazza. Plus there is also a sophisticated 24-hour room service menu. The spectrum of dishes available among these restaurants is impressive. In the Princess Grill, I was able to sample the full gamut of culinary skills and options (albeit, I spent much of my time in the kitchens, observing the smoothly choreographed presentation of thousands of meals). The noise is considerable but instantly reduced when stepping the short distance through a revolving door into the heavily carpeted and draped dining rooms. Here, passengers are enveloped in a comfortable
68 WORLD OF CRUISING I Summer 2010
cocoon of smooth service, deep carpets and the pleasant sounds of glasses, conver- sation and cutlery, oblivious to the blizzard of activity a few yards away.
Ridley is Chef de Cuisine of the Queen’s and Princess Grill, the two most intimate and exclusive dining rooms, which are abutted on Deck Seven and, as mentioned, service the clients who occupy the upper echelons of the ship’s accommodation. Darran has broad experience in the culi-
nary world, having had his own gastro pub business, cooked at Buckingham Palace and, more recently, served a two-year stint with the highly demanding Gordon Ramsey. Yet he brings none of Ramsey’s histrionics aboard. “I don’t do drama – there’s no time for prima donna moments,” he says. “If there’s a problem, we sort it out later; otherwise the problem just gets bigger.”
Indeed, on the one occasion I witnessed an outburst from a pressured waiter directed at an equally pressured sous chef, Ridley handled it with cool aplomb and the incident
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