CC Travel Blog

Jun, 2008
Besides all the on port what to do questions, the 2nd most frequently asked question was “How was the food on board?” It seems that cruise food has been a big mystery on everyone’s mind, and it also has the highest expectations, speaking from personal experience!

In Star Princess, there were charged restaurants (one Italian and one steak house), a few lounges for drinks, a buffet place, a grill station, a pizzaria, an ice cream station, and two official dining rooms.

We did not get to try the charged restaurants because scheduling had been a constant challenge. Reservations are strongly recommended due to limited staff service available to only a handful of tables.

Drinks on lounges are not free (alcoholic or soft) but they’re generally more affordable than some bars from hometown. 15% service charge would be automatically charged to your account, so no cash tipping is required on the ship.

The grill station served omelette in the morning and burgers and hot dogs during the day. Buffet was the only 24 hour food place. It offered more varieties than the dining room but the quality varied due to the length of time the food had been served on top of the steamy water. Don’t expect fruits to be super fresh, but I found the watermellon most pleasant looking. Because the non stop schedule the food was running, I observed that the same kind of food could be on the serving table for a long time. For example, lunch items were served from lunch hour to right before dinner; that means during the 5-6 hours, the same kind of food would be left on the steamy water until it ran out. Very limited refills were made; so at 4pm, you would find that only cookies and some sweets were renewed, the rest were left over from lunch.

In the buffet area, coffee, ice tea, milk and water were constantly available but that was all it offered.

Lastly, the dining room. Dining room’s open hours were limited, so be aware of the strict schedule. During lunch hour, only one dining room opened to serve, so get used to queueing. Each day, breakfast, lunch and dinner menu would post outside the dining room. As I advised before, I would check out the menus to plan for eating activities.  Personally I prefer buffet for breakfast and lunch because it seemed to offer more choices; but dining room offered much better quality on dinner.

Generally dining room offered restaurant style service with order taking, wine serving and celebration cheers. Once waited through the line, a host would take you to the table, a server would take over and properly seat you, ask for drink orders, distribute menu, take orders, deliver food, collect trays, take after meal drink orders, distribute dessert menu and deliver dessert, then properly greet you out.

Dining room is free of charge except alcohols, so soft drinks are within limits to ask. All meal items could be ordered multiple times until your tummy’s satisfied. Overall, the food quality was 3 star according to my ranking, nothing like the Gary Danko or some fine hotel dining, but I could sense that the chef tried hard with planning and presentation. About half the crew on the ship were working on the galleys providing food service to customers.

Crab quiche appertizer.

Smoked duck confit.

Grilled Alaskan salmon, which was a dish that is always available from the menu.

Steak, another dish that was always available.

Reindeer steak entree.

Alaskan king crab legs.

Grilled scallops.

Texas style grilled steak.

At the last day before we docked, the ship organized a tour of the kitchen and the chef did a bit cooking demonstration. It was amazing to see that half of the ship’s crew were dedicated to either work in the kitchen or serving passengers food and drinks. It was also amazing for me to see how large the kitchens were, which was only one of the many.

The chef and the sous chef greeting us during the tour.

Huge dish washing area and it was spotlessly clean.

Pastry area was also not small. It was said that a dozen workers were working on making desserts everyday and another two of them were responsible for doing all the decorations on cakes and plates. Bread was baked fresh twice daily.