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 Entertainment | Restaurants & Dining | February 2006 
Bon Voyage to the Three-Bean Salad
 Michelle Green - NYTimes
| | A couple enjoy a meal on the deck of the Infinity, a Celebrity Cruise vessel. (Chris Ramirez/NYTimes) |
As a lone-wolf traveler and something of a food snob, I'm one of those people who'd always scoffed at the idea of going on a cruise. What I love about getting away is breaking new ground and sniffing out the local culture, which means paying serious attention to the food. Grilled guinea pigs in Peru, obscenely gorgeous eggplants in Tangier, life-altering mangos in the Philippines — how would you get to these things if you were tethered to a cruise ship?
But there it was — the siren call. On the Web, I saw Celebrity Cruises' pitch for its Savor the Caribbean cruises, apparently aimed at food obsessives like me. Celebrity promised a "one-of-a-kind-culinary experience at sea" with "cooking demonstrations" by chefs who know their mezzalunas and their fried plantains; "culinary excursions" in "exotic ports of call" like San Juan and the Bahamas, even an "intimate cooking class" in St. Thomas.
Since my proudest career moment had been the day I'd put on a white jacket to work at Lespinasse (even if it was as a reporter), I was jazzed; surely this would be a steel-drum, rum-fueled fest for foodies.
Six days into my seven-day jaunt aboard Celebrity's showy Infinity in January (which cost $2,093, with a single supplement), I hadn't found the transcendent experience I hoped for. Instead of getting into the kitchen, my sleeves rolled up while I learned the intricacies of preparing some fabulous Caribbean dish, I'd been slumping in a theater seat watching the guest chef Edgar Leal, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, preparing dishes that included lamb with basil mashed potatoes.
I'd had a four-course dinner in the Infinity's formal restaurant, the S.S. United States, that had been splendid in a three-sticks-of-butter-in-every-entrée way. And I'd gone to, yes, a Caribbean-themed party on Infinity's pool deck, but it was to watch folks over 60 dance stiffly even after tanking up on cocktails in coconut shells.
Now, I was braving a "culinary excursion" to candy-colored Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. This time, two-dozen-odd shipmates and I had laid down $105 each to dine in the Disney-cheery Bimini Road Restaurant at the sandcastle-fancy Atlantis Resort.
Celebrity's Web site had promised that we'd "join Atlantis's own Junkanoo Band" as they paraded us into the restaurant here. So far, no band; instead, our group (several retired couples and a boldly dressed pair from Las Vegas who kept to themselves) was trapped on a talky tour that took us through Atlantis's garish casino and manmade waterscape, where tourists from many nations lazed about wearing very little.
But amazing cooking can be found in all sorts of settings, as any glutton knows. And while a purist might have carped about the fact that Bimini Road — with its Middle-America-goes to-the-islands-décor — wasn't exactly Funkytown, the food that began coming at us was anything but faux. Chicken mojo, "smuddered" grouper, tamarind-glazed pork chops, plantain cakes and even a wicked macaroni and cheese. It all tasted as if it could have come from a place whose name a local might have scribbled on a piece of paper.
As servers whisked platters back and forth, one of the chefs, Jasmine Young, a Nassau native, stayed in the dining room, chatting about goat peppers and other exotica. I was forking into a conch salad prettily mounded into an orange shell when Ms. Young picked up a live conch to show us its occupant.
She handed it over to her assistant at a work table nearby; the assistant then used a long knife to whack into the thick shell, breaking it in half. Smiling, she extracted a slick mass with bruised-looking spots on its footlong mess of a body and held it up for us to see.
Next, someone (by now, I was watching through my fingers) lifted a live crab and — demonstrating how it would be prepped for cooking — began to pluck off its flailing legs. One by one by one, until only the torso was left. Holding the thing in her palm, Ms. Young brought it over for us to inspect. Her words softened by her melodious accent, she said, "Look, it's a female."
Graphic, sure, but watching violent programming was preferable to the feeling of being trapped on vacation with one's own relatives. Back at the ship, the crowd was overwhelmingly geriatric; wheelchairs jockeyed for position at the glassed-in elevators and the lunch line at the largest restaurant, the Trellis, was jammed with septuagenarians complaining about rivals who "cut the line."
Since it was the dead of winter, family groups and honeymooners were in the minority. Cigar aficionados, however, were plentiful; at night, from my veranda, I began dumping ice water onto smokers below.
The fare on Infinity sometimes seemed alien, too. Trolling the buffet after boarding, I had seen three-bean salads, a hulking roast of beef, pizzas under a warming light. The next morning when I had braved the ship's Aquaspa cafe, there had been cold toast, pale melon and — O.K. — great smoked salmon. My fantasies of forming a clique with "Taste of the Caribbean" types — simpatico souls who'd signed on for the culinary adventure — had dimmed during Mr. Leal's first cooking demo, on Monday. Since the event was held in the ship's theater, it wasn't exactly intimate. .
Several who had wandered in by the 2 p.m. start time were clutching umbrella drinks, and a few seemed to be event-hopping. (A talk on "Eat More to Weigh Less" was starting at the spa.) Only about 35 seats were occupied by the time the cruise director, Jeff Potts, jumped onstage to say, "Let's have a thunderous round of applause for Edgar Leal and his lovely wife, Mariana!"
Both born in Caracas, Venezuela, Mr. Leal, 37, and Mariana Montero de Castro, 27, now have a popular restaurant, Cacao, in Coral Gables. The high-spirited Mr. Leal worked at Daniel in New York before becoming executive chef for the ARA restaurants in Caracas; Ms. Montero de Castro, who has the solemn look of the drummer Meg White, studied in Caracas and Paris, where she worked at Restaurant Laurent.
Onstage, Mr. Leal was the front man; Ms. Montero assisted. His message: You can do this at home. Since the audience seemed ready for a Food Network-style encounter, it was a perfect fit.
"This is a recipe about how if you want to have guests come to your house and say what a good cook you are and what a bad cook they are," Mr. Leal was saying. "This is like, 'Wow!' "
Two seats over from me, a man began reading the recipe for "Upside Down Martini Blanc Gazpacho served with Tuna Tartare" to the woman beside him; across the aisle, someone bit loudly into an ice cream cone.
The preparation of Mr. Leal's dish was simple, but the product — an ethereal white gazpacho with coconut milk and cucumber — was impressive. Before it reaches the table, the soup is poured to the top of a martini glass that is inverted onto a deep plate; a circle of tuna tartare is then placed on the bottom of the inverted glass. At the table, a waiter lifts the glass and adds the silky tartare to the gazpacho in the plate.
(We were invited onto the stage after the demonstration for tastes from tiny paper cups; it was so good that I forgot to ask why he'd chosen a tricked-up blender recipe that didn't even deliver an alluring smell, or that seemed only vaguely Caribbean.)
Chatting as he worked, Mr. Leal threw out lines seemingly at random: "We cook at home every Sunday." And: "I have a great wife, but I know I'm a terrible husband."
When Mr. Leal needed a larger knife, Ms. Montero handed him one without comment. The audience tittered sitcom-style.
"Don't laugh that much," he said good-naturedly. "It doesn't make me feel well."
"At least you admit it when you need help," called out a red-haired vacationer in the front row. "My husband will never admit he's wrong."
The appreciative laughter didn't disturb the people who — lulled by the ship's pleasant rocking — had dozed off in their seats.
Four days, four demos: The virtual-cooking experience was both too much and not enough. I wanted a knife in my hand, and I wanted the sensual pleasure of chopping and shredding. Instead, I was parked in a theater seat watching Mr. Leal making Ecuadorian shrimp ceviche (served, like his first dish, in a martini glass); the lamb dish; and chicken stuffed with mushroom risotto.
Where was the heat? Where was the kitchen? Where was my "one-of-a-kind culinary experience?" (Others, though, seemed happy with the setup; one family whose buzz-cut patriarch wore a "Drink Beer, Save Water" T-shirt sat in the front row of every show, rapt throughout.)
AT the same time, in the food-obsessed culture of a cruise ship, where the pancake and waffle station opens at 7:30 a.m., the pizza bar doesn't close until 1 a.m. and guests attack the week's end midnight spread ("Le Grand Buffet") with the intensity of Black Friday shoppers, watching someone conjure up one more snack seemed like overkill. And since Mr. Leal's performances were broadcast on one of the ship's TV channels, they greeted me at all hours. I watched him boiling shrimp while I was lingering over my room-service crème brûlée, while I was brushing my teeth, and while I was doing bicep curls in my cabin.
Maybe it was just me, but with the "Taste of the Caribbean" buildup and the focus on high-end cuisine, I felt hyper-annoyed when I was served slightly overcooked salmon at Trellis or saw pink tomatoes at the poolside hamburger bar. And the two room service breakfasts that never appeared? It's hard to be a good culinary explorer on an empty stomach.
It's also hard when you have to weather a field trip to get the food, which was the story on two out of the three culinary excursions shore. When we landed in San Juan, I joined the 20 or so cruisers who were bused to the restaurant Pikayo, in the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. The charge: $125.
At the museum, we were handed over to a guide for a 45-minute tour of a collection whose standouts include a surreal "macho" room decked out with hubcaps and barbers' chairs. That, I loved. But the promised "leisurely walk through the extensive native plant gardens" didn't happen, and I began to long for the sight of a palm tree.
At Pikayo, the chef, Wilo Benet, a genial man who was born in Puerto Rico and trained with Gilbert LeCoze at Le Bernadin, was doing the kind of haute cuisine that excites food writers and local residents with deep pockets. The setting — a formal space with high-backed linen-covered chairs and white china — reflects his sensibility.
During our two-hour meal there, I found two boon companions from the ship — a lawyer and a judge from Pittsburgh who, like me, were itching to shop for hand-carved rosaries and folk-art Madonnas when we were sprung. We had plenty of time to dish during a four-course meal that, for me, included mushroom risotto; a House Oven-Dried Tomato Purée Sautéed With Cello Spinach in Olive Oil in a "Pionono" Shell Of Fried Ripe Plantains, Over a Sweet Corn Emulsion With Asparagus; and a Puerto Rican cheese custard. Served with a Spanish wine, a 2004 Valminor albariño, every bit of the meal was delicious — and not so different from what you'd find in any high-concept restaurant in Manhattan.
If we were shortchanged on rum and sunshine in Puerto Rico, our pilgrimage in St. Thomas evened things out. At the end of a twisting, near-vertical road three miles from Charlotte Amalie, the weathered brick-and-stucco building that houses the Old Stone Farmhouse was built as the field house for a sugar plantation over 200 years ago. It's the sort of romantic-looking place that makes me suspect that the food will be either supernal or sadly subpar.
Celebrity's Web pitch had promised us an "intimate cooking lesson" on St. Thomas, so I'd concocted a fantasy involving a small group collaborating on something fragrant in a capacious old kitchen. That, however, translated into our sipping rum on the patio while the chef Brian Katz did the cooking.
Even so, our $108 excursion delivered the sort of blue-sky afternoon that made me want to jump ship. Working at a portable cooktop, Mr. Katz (who was born in Great Neck, on Long Island, and apprenticed with the chef Anita Montero in New Orleans) made three-rum-flamed shrimp with fried cassava, ginger cucumber sauce and pickled beets; and a malt-and-mango-marinated chicken with plantain mofongo and almond-sautéed zucchini. When he boiled fennel seed and black peppercorn with rice vinegar for the pickled-beet marinade, a pleasingly sharp, spicy fragrance wafted into the warm breeze.
"This is tons better than yesterday," whispered one of my tablemates, a lively retiree from Minnesota whom I'd met on the Pikayo tour. People at other tables took notes, but we sank into a pleasant, rum-induced haze as lizards skittered in the nearby bushes.
With rooster screeches punctuating his narrative, Mr. Katz talked easily about the difference between Puerto Rican and West Indian cuisine (the former has more Spanish influence) about his favorite description of a coulis ("the backdrop for an opera") and about why you should never microwave a plantain (the seeds are slightly metallic, so they spark).
When Mr. Katz went back to the kitchen to rustle up our meals, the sommelier, John Gabelhausen, a Jake Gyllenhaal look-alike in khaki shorts, talked about the rums that we were zipping through. My favorite: an Angostura 1919 that reminded me of my favorite single-malt scotch, Lagavullan. It was the perfect setup for my pan-seared tilapia with a ginger carrot cake, almond-sautéed zucchini and an infused herb oil — a dish that was earthy and complex, like — Eureka! — exotic soul food.
There was a lesson to all of this, and it struck me the next day, when our feast on Paradise Island was ending. After 15 dishes emerged from the kitchen at Bimini Road, we were staring, awestruck, at dessert — an immense platter of guava duff, which was like a jelly roll, with a pastry-cream sauce. Though I could manage only a bite, I thought, fine — I would never have encountered this if I hadn't joined a cruise.
And then came the oddball, steel-drum finale. It was the "Junkanoo Band" that Celebrity had promised: waitresses, waiters, all in uniform, led by a cook in an immense feathered headdress. Following the drum-beating cook to our tables, they clapped, blew whistles, tooted horns and shouted songs like "Down by the Riverside" in voices that were remarkably strong and true.
It was cringe worthy, but I think I was the only one who cringed.
Really, you just had to be there.
Michelle Green is a senior writer for People magazine. |
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