Dining On a Cruise Ship

Dining On a Cruise Ship

Whenever I talk about a cruise, two comments always seem to arise.  Is the food really fabulous, and are dinners all formal dress?

Second question first.  No.  Yes once upon a time they were formal and men wore tuxedos or at least a suit, women dressed to the nines.  Currently dress is casual though most guests do wear nice casual.  Shorts are frowned upon and collar shirts are preferred.  The old time cruisers love to lament the casual dress.  They feel cruises should be formal and luxurious.  These people are old snots who apparently can afford to board the ship with several suitcases or a huge travel trunk.  If they had their way the cruise liners would go out of business, because their snobbery would turn away most passengers.

The answer to the first question is No.  The food is good, it is not fabulous.  Breakfast is a notch below what you get at a Jersey Diner…which is still pretty damn good, lunch is ok, but not great and dinner is good…it is not fabulous.  Given so many passengers all eating at the same time the service and food is darn good, as good as can be expected, but it is not fabulous.  The people that rave about the food are really raving at the fact that if you want you can eat 24/7. 

Cruiser food is good, but don’t go on a cruise just for the food, unless you want unlimited carbs, sugar, and salt.  If you want to pack on the pounds, a cruise is the way to go.

Dinner is interesting.  On my first cruise we ate every night at the same time and we were seated with the same couple.  Fortunately the couple we were seated with was a lovely couple from Germany.  We had very nice, very interesting conversations.  I have heard stories of people having to change arrangements mid-cruise because they were paired with people that ruined their appetite.

On this cruise we were seated with different people every night.  We met many lovely people and it worked out very well.  We only had one meal with a butthead couple.  He looked like a fat bald Cathy Bates from the movie “Misery.”  She was the spitting image of Susan Boyle.  A fun couple, they have not had sex since 1983. 

We knew there was something strange about them on the introductions.  One couple at the table was from Montreal, Canada; we declared our home as from New Jersey, fat bald Cathy Bates and Susan Boyle were from “The Pacific Northwest.”  WTF!  Did they just get off the Lewis and Clark trail?  Is there still a territory in North America that is unclaimed?  Were they homesteaders?

Worse yet, fat bald Cathy Bates was a Manspreader and I could barely reach the table for lack of non-knee touching space.  Even more worse, he was a bread hog.  He somehow managed to coral the bread basket into his own little section of the table and proceeded to pick at the bread as if it was all his own.  He would grab a slice; rip off a piece and put the rest back, kind of a bread equivalent of a double dip.

It would not have been too bad, except this couple insisted on leading the conversation.  Susan was upset that the comedian the night before was racist.  This comedian was very funny.  He imitated Indians, blacks, Asians, Muslims, Wasps, and Jews.  Yes he made fun of stereotypes.  But he did it in a way that was more endearing than vicious. Susan Boyle could not recognize the difference in mocking out of hate and having fun with different cultures, and he left no one out.  BTW, he was a Jew, as if that mattered.  I really did not want to get into an argument, so I just agreed, “Yes he was a little offensive, I’d much prefer a comedian who could make fun out of things that were not controversial…you know, like asking a doctor to “Take my pulse…Please!’”

“Why,” Susan asked, “Is that funny?”

“Oh yeah, I guess if you are from the Pacific Northwest, it doesn’t make much sense.”

Then fat bald Cathy Bates starts up, “How about that Donald Trump, isn’t he just a disgraceful clown?”

It doesn’t matter if I like Trump or not, he doesn’t know my position.  Why would you chance insulting someone who might really feel strongly about Trump?  I would have been just as annoyed if he said, “Isn’t that Hilary a lying crook who belongs in jail.” 

Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a fight so I just said, “You probably don’t like him because he wants to put a wall around the Pacific Northwest, and make the homesteaders pay for it.”

“Huh?”

At this point dinner was over, so Mrs. C and I politely excused ourselves, left the Pacific Northwest and headed to the casino.