The rumors are true. All of them. The stories, the maritime legends. All spot-on. The food on a cruise ship is a hot mess of awesomeness.
I recently went on my first cruise and I wasn't on board 24 hours before I went, "Ah . . . Well played, cruise word-of-mouth advertising; well played." The quantity, the quality and the Roman emperor-style attitude about food was through the roof. I didn't see a Caligula Room 'n Vomitorium on board, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.
For every one of the 3,000 people on a cruise ship there are about seven pounds of potatoes, a couple sticks of butter, five pounds of salmon, 17 asparagus spears, and three quarts of gelato. The garnish alone must fill an industrial-sized refrigerator. And if you wish to have more than your share, you're in luck: Some people on the ship just drink all day.
So, yes, it's all true. But my first experience on a cruise ship taught me that there's more. Much more than the stories will have you believe.
Before this cruise, I pictured a long buffet table with Sterno dishes full of chicken, roast beef and pigs in a blanket, shrimp on ice, a sheet cake, and cookies as big as my head. Why I thought a cruise would be like a 1980s Pittsburgh wedding reception I can't explain. I pictured this buffet table in the mid-ship area, available 24-hours a day with someone in a white jacket checking on amounts and stirring things in the middle of the night. Imagine my surprise when the food wasn't just a stationary object, a magnetic beacon of tastiness that called to us night and day; It was brought to us, sometimes on a literal silver platter.
There were buffets, absolutely there were. But after you would fill your plate (or plates, as it were) with food, here comes Bonny with a tray of pastries that she holds over your head - again literally - until you give in and take three. Once she offered to go get my food for me while I saved a table for my posse. I declined, knowing she would bring me the entire five-pound bleu cheese wedge and a couple loaves of bread. Bonny was like an Italian grandmother put in charge of a boat full of anorexic teens.
In addition to the buffet madness, there were restaurants on board. There you had waiters who pushed food on you like a drug dealer under the overpass. Can't decide between the pan seared filet mignon or the blackened ahi tuna? "I'll bring you both," your favorite waiter says. Hesitate in the least over the baked Alaska or the apple cobbler with ice cream and you're likely to get all that and a piece of cheesecake.
"Are they trying to kill us?" I whispered to my sister-in-law. "Shut up," she said. "Don't ruin this for us."
And therein lies part of my problem: I was on a cruise with three other women who didn't have to watch their weight. Two of them were actually trying to gain weight. And our cruise package was all inclusive, so money was no object. The whole thing was so bad, it seemed too good to be true.
"Wait. We get breakfast room service? For free?" my daughter said after finding a menu tucked under the snack tray of hummus, olives and chips that had appeared in our stateroom while we were out.
"Mmm," I squinted and shook my head. "That doesn't sound right. Maybe there's a hitch."
"Hitch? There was no hitch in the champagne and three apples that were left in our room yesterday. By fairies. There was no hitch in the mimosas that are thrust upon us every time we walk into that one big room down there. There was no hitch in the fact that we can dine and dash without paying our bill every single night, no matter what we order. I think room service breakfast is free."
It was. Although I'm not proud to say that we gradually got more unabashedly bold, not to mention gluttonous, so that by the final day, it took two grown men to bring in the stacks of covered trays of eggs, fruit, toast and pastries ordered by one person.
I won't mention any names. What happens on Celebrity Solstice stays on your waistline for a ridiculous amount of time.
