Thursday, March 21, 2013

Sunday 17th March To Monte Carlo


In the morning we wandered around the ship and had a late'ish breakfast and noticed that the plate warmer in the buffet area was not on and so if you had a hot breakfast collecting your scrambled eggs etc they got cold pretty quickly. Went back in the cabin and there was a message to call the Executive Chef and although I called about four or five times during the day we could not reach him.
We arrived in Monaco just before lunch with the weather being poor with grey clouds and light rain but in the afternoon we walked around the town, which was closed as it was a Sunday but did find the railways station and checked on trains to Nice as we planned to spend the day there tomorrow.
Back on board the ship there was planned to be a BBQ on deck that night which had to be called off due to the inclement weather and so they had arranged what they called a 'Galley Dinner' which is a basically a large buffet where all the dishes are laid out in the kitchen. No problems with that except all the hot dishes were warm and not hot and the carving pig was quite cool.
Part the way through the dinner the Executive Chef appeared on the scene glowing with pleasure with what had been arranged and talking to arriving guests and so I approached him and introduced myself and he started to apologise for the cold food etc from the previous night and I said fine, but tonight’s food is also just as cool. He looked surprised at my comments about the rice and curry's  etc with a low temp and he said he would check on it. I watched him for about the next forty five minutes and there was no obvious action and so I tackled him again when leaving the restaurant. He said he had been away to make some changes and I said he had not left the restaurant in the last forty minutes and nothing had changed. I then said, just try the temperature of this pork and picked up a bit which was ready for serving in my fingers and it was cool, he looked at the Chinese staff and asked him for a bit from the very top of the joint which was near the hot light to keep it warm, and yes it was hot only they were cutting the meat in advance and it would then get cold before being served. I was very pissed off with him and let him know it and then stormed off.


Not a good way to end the evening