Food quality on Explorer

I've been on the Nome to Seward cruise for about 5 days and have left each meal in the MDR a little disappointed. Service is OK, wine OK, it's just not like either Seaborn or Crystal.

 

So the question, what can I do? I have heard about asking for special meals e.g. Thai dinner or a steak. What have you done?

Hm. You may have heightened expectations, perhaps due to overexuberant SS advertising.

 

I've cruised on Explorer 4x and the Cloud/Wind 6x. The food on Explorer is good, but it isn't quite up to the standards of the other ships. But I expect that, and therefore, I am not disappointed. Explorer has a tiny galley compared to the other ships.

 

You might try discussing your concerns with the chef, and if there is something that might elevate your dining experience, by all means ask. IME the chefs are all very approachable and willing to do what they can to please. But I do not expect Seabourn or Crystal type food on an expedition ship. Expedition cruising is a different animal.

 

The exception would be one of the culinary cruises that take place on Explorer once in a while. Our last cruise was a culinary expedition and the food was incredible. But the more exotic locales - not culinary experiences.

 

Hope you are enjoying the other aspects of this cruise. The wildlife sightings so far look amazing!

 

PS Who is the head chef?

We just came off Explorer and felt your pain. I am a beef eater and there is a lacking of beef on dinner menus. What I did: order a steak at dinner; usually a sirloin but you can ask for strip or filet, ask in advance. I also ordered steaks during lunch; they came down from grill. If you like rare, make sure you enforce this. Steak came overdone first day and waiter showed Frederick and he then showed Ross and I never had that problem again.

 

At lunch I often had a salad and the meat carving; occasionally ordered a hot dog (great) or hamburgers which were fine.

 

Marc

Hi, Ross,

 

We enjoyed having dinner with you last night, and I wish I had seen this first as we would have discussed it. Food definitely not Regent, mainstream Silversea, or Oceania ( can’t comment regarding Crystal or Seabourn as I haven’t sailed on those cruise lines).

 

The food this cruise isn’t the best I have had on Explorer, but is definitely not the worst. It is very location and supply driven as well as chef driven. The recipes are set by the home office and are the same on each ship though the chef can improvise some depending on what he has available. My venison last night was outstanding, but I have eaten this menu many times and knew what to order.

 

You definitely can make special requests 24 hours in advance. As Marq noted, I have a couple of friends who have a standing order for a steak every night.

 

Our First Explorer cruise, in Svalbard, they ran out of Diet Coke and bacon. I had friends who were on a cruise on this ship where they ran out of red wine. Now those were disasters.

Our First Explorer cruise, in Svalbard, they ran out of Diet Coke and bacon. I had friends who were on a cruise on this ship where they ran out of red wine. Now those were disasters.

OMG!!! Should those of us heading to the South Georgia Islands contact special services now? I must have my bacon whilst on vacation as it's about the only time DW will allow me to partake. :D

Stumblefoot, no worries. Our cruise is on Silver Cloud. But you are cruising with us, and the rest of our group, so you do need to worry about running out of wine...

 

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OMG!!! Should those of us heading to the South Georgia Islands contact special services now? I must have my bacon whilst on vacation as it's about the only time DW will allow me to partake. :D

It was really sad! George’s morning drink of choice is Diet Coke, and bacon is my cruise indulgence.

But you are cruising with us, and the rest of our group, so you do need to worry about running out of wine...

:eek: Duly noted JP.

 

 

Amy and I will protect the white wine inventory if you and Chris will protect the reds.

 

It was really sad! George’s morning drink of choice is Diet Coke, and bacon is my cruise indulgence.

I bet! I would have been sad too. As Amy tells me, "you already have too many indulgences in your life", so this is why I'm only allowed bacon of the turkey or Canadian variety at home. :D

Turkey bacon isn’t real bacon

 

 

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Maybe what I'm experiencing is inconsistency vs all poor. Dinner last night was very good, it appeared that all the entres at our table were cooked perfectly.

Thanks for the ideas.

We're crossing the Bering sea right now and scopolamine is my best friend.

Turkey bacon isn’t real bacon

I AGREE!!! I can hardly wait to introduce you to Amy so you can help her understand. :)

Turkey bacon isn’t real bacon

 

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Thank goodness that turkey bacon hasnt made it to Australia :D

I'm going to revive this thread since I've had time to digest my experience on this expedition cruise. First, the expedition staff was great and the service was very good, as was the hotel staff. There was quite a bit of downtime but that's the nature of (at least this one) an expedition cruise.

 

You may have noticed my less than enthusiastic thoughts on the food.

 

Clearly, there were a few superb meals but as a whole everything was done as simply and easily as possible. Of course it was, you might think, but this "easy" thing is on a continuum and at the low end it gets pretty disappointing. For example, as a chef, you can make a bean dish that takes very little effort to season and make a nice presentation, or you can open a can and dump it into a serving tray. We got the can . . . every lunch. Same with fruit, sometimes it was cut and fresh, but often just canned. Bread takes a little more time to bake really nice offers or a little less time to produce really poor quality, you know what we got. Frozen raw croissants from Costco that are thawed and cooked would have been remarkable compared to what we got.

 

Some of my shipmates suggested that we had poor quality ingredients, I couldn't tell that anything was that bad but what I saw was poor preparation. I actually saw the produce being loaded for the next cruise and it looked fine.

 

I tried to get a galley tour since I'm a chef and thought I would get a better understanding of what was happening. The head chef explained that US law prohibits passengers from the galley. We were in international waters and the ship is registered in the Bahamas. I don't know, Seaborne was thrilled to give me a tour. Where I'm going with this is that maybe the galley was so small they couldn't produce quality meals, frankly, I believe they were just not trying.

 

For me, I'm not going to try again. Seaborne and Crystal are just great. Possibly menus were planned by some central office, I don't really care why it failed I just know it did. This perspective is just for me, others may love everything about Silversea and that's totally reasonable; I'm not trying to convince anybody I just wanted to share my experience.

Ross, I have to agree about the food on this cruise. I had some great dishes, but most were just ok. Lunch buffet seemed the same thing every day. I ended up just have salad most days, as the carvery board was consistently over cooked and tough (exception being the salmon en croissant) . I would have liked more veggies at dinner for sure.

Having had quite a few cruises on the Explorer I find meal quality does depend on who is the chef.Some are good,some mediocre and 1 was just not to our taste at all.